KIRO’s John Curley is warning Washington voters not to get distracted by the “millionaires tax” label as they decide whether to repeal the state’s new 9.9% income tax on household income above $1 million through Initiative 645.

“It’s an income tax. It’s not a millionaires tax,” Curley said. “That’s only to make you think it’s to get somebody else and not get you.”

Curley pointed to polling cited by tax opponents showing 66% of Washington voters believe lawmakers will eventually expand the tax to additional earners. The current law applies only above the $1 million threshold, so expansion would require a future change in law. But Curley argues voters shouldn’t assume today’s threshold is permanent.

“Everybody knows it’s coming for everybody,” he warned.

That, Curley says, is the real question behind I-645: not simply who pays Washington’s income tax today, but whether voters trust future lawmakers to leave the threshold where it is. Read more at MyNorthwest.com.

Sound Transit’s shiny new light rail line across Lake Washington has encountered a minor problem: roughly 2,000 fish have died near the I-90 floating bridge since early August, with the deaths concentrated around electrical equipment connected to the bridge and rail system.

Yes, really.

The agency specifically considered protecting fish from stray electrical current while designing the project and previously concluded the system wouldn’t have a significant impact on them. Apparently, the fish missed that environmental assessment.

Sound Transit now says several electrical anode strings had been touching the lakebed and were raised last month, which officials believe addresses the immediate problem. They still don’t know exactly why the cables were affecting the fish and are investigating a permanent fix.

For years, Seattle’s political Left has sold light rail as the environmentally righteous alternative to cars while taxpayers shovel billions into an increasingly expensive transit system. Now, after celebrating the engineering marvel of putting trains across a floating bridge, Sound Transit is scrambling to explain why its supposedly green infrastructure appears to be zapping fish.

Only in Washington could taxpayers spend billions to save the planet and somehow end up frying the wildlife instead. Read more at Axios.

Washington has a serious problem: more than 20,000 primary ballots were rejected for late postmarks, with rural counties hit especially hard. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) and Secretary of State Steve Hobbs (D) responded with a Seattle press conference blaming Trump-era Postal Service changes, with Cantwell accusing USPS of “disenfranchising voters” and Hobbs saying the agency is trying to “ruin vote by mail.”

But the broader late-ballot problem predates the latest USPS changes, according to the historical data cited by state Rep. Josh Penner (R-Orting). That complicates the neat Washington-D.C.-did-it explanation.

USPS changes are contributing to delayed postmarks — Hobbs has documented evidence of that problem himself. But with thousands of ballots going uncounted in a state that has spent years championing universal vote-by-mail, Cantwell and Hobbs have more to explain about the system itself than who’s occupying the White House.

Blaming Trump makes for an easy press conference. Explaining why Washington’s “celebrated” vote-by-mail system is losing thousands of ballots is the harder job. Read more at Seattle Red.

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