Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 13, at 5:30-7 pm at the Hive at 2904 E Sprague Ave (and on Zoom) the non-partisan League of Women Voters of Spokane Area will hold its December Meeting. The meeting (full advertisement below) will be led by the LWV’s Affordable Housing and Homeless Solutions Committee and will feature speakers from local groups deeply involved in ameliorating local homelessness.
I encourage you to attend in person or by Zoom. It seems evident that Mayor Woodward’s and Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich’s pre-occupation with clearing Camp Hope is a misdirection, a poor example of leadership. They are concentrated on dismantling a camp that is an enduring symbol of the policy failure of the Mayor’s office. The issue of homelessness is not amenable solely to the one-size-fits-all approach exemplified by the Trent warehouse (TRAC). It is going to take a village…
Please attend LWV of Spokane meeting either in person or on Zoom. Get better acquainted with some better solutions arising from community leadership.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
December General Meeting With Our AHHS
Jennifer Calvert, Affordable Housing and Homeless Solutions Committee
The Affordable Housing and Homeless Solutions committee is excited to be presenting the program for the December LWV of Spokane Area general meeting. Our very busy committee members have been reaching out to leaders of organizations who provide services for the unhoused citizens in our community as we continue to research problems and solutions to the housing crisis in the Spokane area.
Meagan Vincello and Zeke Smith of the Empire Health foundation, and Sarah Ben Olson and Jonas Hawk from the New Hope Resource Center will speak at the meeting.
We will discuss transitional housing and look at Spokane Valley’s homeless plan and accomplishments with its outreach team.
A committee member who has held various roles while working at Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington will share her thoughts and perspective on the positives and the downsides of “housing first” programs based on her own first-hand experience.
We invite you to join us in person on Tuesday, December 13, at 5:30 pm at The Hive, located at 2904 E. Sprague Ave. You also have the option to join the meeting via zoom.
We encourage you to bring gloves, hats, socks, scarves, coats and other warm winter gear to share with those less fortunate, and we will be happy to share them where they are most needed.
You can’t make this stuff up, but it is far too easy to miss it.
The problem of affordable housing and homelessness has been growing year after year. In 2020 a long term effort to provide a revenue stream to support affordable housing culminated in the passage of HB1590 by the Washington State legislature and signature by the governor. HB1590 authorizes Washington counties (or cities, if the county does not) to impose an additional local 1/10 of 1% sales tax for the following use:
A minimum of 60 percent of revenues collected must be used for constructing affordable housing and facilities providing housing-related services, constructing mental and behavioral health-related facilities, or funding the operations and maintenance costs of newly constructed affordable housing, facilities providing housing-related services, or evaluation and treatment centers.
In November 2020 the Spokane City Council voted, under this enabling state legislation, to impose an 1/10 of 1% sales tax in Spokane. In 2023 that tax is projected to raise seven million dollars for the specific services detailed above. (It is expected to cost the the average City of Spokane citizen between about $25 per year. At passage several council members noted and lamented that this is a regressive tax, but it should be noted that, in our State, options for raising money with a non-regressive tax are severely limited.)
The Housing Sales Tax first appeared in the Mayor’s 2022 budget (adopted December 13, 2021). In that budget revenues from the Housing Sales Tax were pegged at $6.8M. No expenses were projected. So far, so good.
But now the devil is in the details.
This coming Monday, December 12, the City of Spokane City Council is expected to vote on Mayor Woodward’s proposed 2023 budget. In it, on page 18, the No. 1 point under “Homeless Services” is (the italics are mine):
1. Support the Continued Operations of the Cannon Flex Shelter, TRAC & other Homelessness Resources ($7.0 million, Affordable Housing)
In order to retain beds in an environment where demand is increasing yet funding is decreasing, the Mayor is proposing the use of affordablehousing sales tax dollars. Homelessness programming would continue to be supplemented with federal and state funding with a planned tapering down of local funding over the next three to five years.
At the best this is puzzling language, but it certainly reads to suggest that Mayor Woodward plans to sink most of the $7.0 million additional sales tax NOT into the affordable housing for which it was authorized by HB1590. Instead, she plans to use it mostly to support her warehouse Trent Shelter (“TRAC”). It doesn’t take a lawyer to to suspect that Woodward’s budget proposal for use of the Housing Sales Tax dollars violates the intent of the enabling state legislation. Only at a great stretch can the beds and pallets in the Trent warehouse of the homeless (TRAC) be seen to be or to support affordable housing. Equally maddening is that from one side of her mouth Woodward laments that “funding is decreasing” (funding from what source is decreasing?) while from the other side she tries to score political points with her doomed veto of a negligible one percent rise in the City’s property tax levy—a tax that will help correct the lamented decrease.
The rest of Woodward’s 2023 Budget offers no help. On page 311 claims to provide “Housing Sales Tax Budget Detail”, but after projecting $106K for administrative costs, the remaining $6894K is listed as unspecified “Services”.
Mayor Woodward’s attitude toward the issue of homelessness, the issue she campaigned to fix, is coming into focus. Early on she proved her lack of empathy with the comment that the homeless need to be “less comfortable”. Her goal is to displace the homeless sheltering downtown. Thanks to the Martin v. Boise decisionWoodward and her administration aren’t allowed to simply demonize and persecute the downtown homeless (make them “less comfortable”) with repetitive sweeps and confiscations of their worldly belongings. Martin v. Boise first required the administration to provide shelter beds. The Trent warehouse shelter (TRAC) was the convenient answer. Not only was the warehouse located far enough away from downtown, but it could be leased from Larry Stone, the man who funded the youtube video Curing Spokane, a thinly veiled contribution to Woodward’s campaign for mayor. Despite the rhetoric by the administration and the sincere efforts of those who attempt to make it work, for Woodward, the Trent warehouse is about claiming sufficient numbers of shelter beds. Meanwhile, she works to close out beds downtown, quietly removing funding for the Hope House women’s shelter (downtown on 3rd Avenue), stimulating Catholic Charities to relocate, and ousting smaller operations like God’s Love International from 930 W Second Ave during a Covid outbreak (on the pretext of code violations). All are stepwise efforts at downtown clearance. Force all the homeless into a one-size-fits-all cavernous warehouse (TRAC, aka “the Trent Shelter) on the industrial outskirts of the city—out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Helping the homeless obtain permanent shelter was never the primary concern.
Camp Hope is the newsworthy, visible reminder that the homelessness issue is far from resolved by simply warehousing people. As a visible reminder of the inadequacy of the Woodward plan, Camp Hope must be closed before it has too much success at getting people housed, hence the harassment by Sheriff Knezovich’s helicopter overflights and the recent provocative invasion of Camp Hope by tens of law enforcement officers to “provide information”.
This entry in the Mayor’s 2023 Proposed Budget, the apparent diversion of money to Woodward’s warehouse from its legally authorized purpose of funding affordable housing, fits the pattern of her intent.
Contact your City of Spokane City Council members either as a group (citycouncil2@spokanecity.org) or individually over the weekend and let them know what you think of Woodward’s budget diversion. Exactly what “Services” does Woodward plan to purchase with the $6894K of our sales tax receipts designated for affordable housing?
A chance for civic engagement Thursday evening, December 8, 6-7PM
Among the latest Republican culture war strategies, thanks to Christopher Rufo and Steve Bannon, is to assail school boards over supposed threats to children posed by gender-inclusivity. Many of those motivated to attend school board meetings and protest against gender-inclusivity seem most concerned that making children aware of gender non-conformity and teaching acceptance of those differences among people might lure their completely binary children to try out a gender non-conforming “lifestyle”. Often the concern is rooted in religious conviction that gender is strictly determined by sex assigned at birth and that any deviation from that assignment is sinful, a choice or a sign of mental illness, and ought not to be legal, much less tolerated and taught in schools.
In contrast, those in favor of teaching gender inclusivity on an age appropriate basis generally consider gender non-conformity to be pre-determined, innate. Gender non-conformity is something to be acknowledged, accepted, and accommodated as a part of the range of normal humanity, rather than suppressed and criticized as a “lifestyle choice.” Families with members who have suffered the stress of rejection and opprobrium on account of gender non-conformity know the consequences first hand. (See Violence Large and Small–and the Social Milieu That Nurtures It.)
An inherent fault of our democracy is that an energized vocal minority, the “squeaky wheel”, can have an outsize effect. The folks who argue that children should not be taught gender-inclusivity, that past prejudices are just fine and need no revision are such a vocal minority.
If you can spare an hour this evening, Thursday evening between 6 and 7, whether or not you are geographically part of the Central Valley School District, consider attending the gathering advertised below. You will not be alone in your opinions. Petra Hoy, a dedicated Central Valley activist will be there with other policy defenders.
This is one facet of a nationally stoked controversy that pops up again and again in the context of the public schools. It behooves us to support the schools in moving forward instead of being dragged back into the prejudices and misconceptions of the past. To paraphrase a famous quote, “All that is required for reactionary, hurtful views to prevail is for good people to do nothing.”
If you want to see samples from the CVSD School Board meeting on November 14 that set the stage for this “Let’s Talk About It” meeting tonight, check out this Zoom video. It is very long. Public testimony on gender inclusivity starts at about 48:00. Be sure to watch Dr. Pam Kohlmeier’s testimony beginning at 1:02:05 and one particularly egregious bit of testimony at 1:32:28.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For more background, here is the Guest Opinion of Dr. Kohlmeier that appeared in the Spokesman November 27.
I presented most of the following message to the Central Valley School Board meeting earlier this month. My words seek to remind each of us of the why behind gender inclusive policies and procedures in our schools. My comments are deeply personal. They involve one of my adult children, Katie Thew, who identified as transgender and nonbinary and who recently died by suicide.
According to the Trevor Project, in the past year more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide. What’s more is that 42% of nonbinary individuals and over half of transgender males actually attempt suicide in their lifetimes. These are frightening statistics.
While Katie had other contributing factors, being transgender and nonbinary raised Katie’s risk of suicide astronomically. Like many transgender youths, Katie outwardly appeared to be thriving throughout the course of their primary and secondary education but in reality, was experiencing trauma in school. Months before Katie died, Katie described three deeply rooted scars that were caused by events in school between fourth and 12th grades in Spokane County. I share these scars to raise awareness, and in no way to shame or blame. Katie’s scars were forming unbeknownst to their parents while attending a great school with loving friends and teachers. But even in a seemingly nurturing environment, harm was done.
Scar 1: Bathroom experiences were deeply traumatic. Beginning in about fifth grade, Katie would limit their fluid intake to try to prevent using a school restroom during the day. Yes, the entire school day. Why? Going into a girl’s bathroom was expected, but Katie did not feel like a girl – ever. Katie was born female but felt like a boy and frankly looked like a boy, with a sporty haircut and boys clothing, so much so that Katie was once redirected by an adult away from a girls bathroom at school based on that boyish appearance. This, too, was traumatic. As a result, Katie didn’t feel comfortable using any bathroom at school for years.
Scar 2: Katie endured trauma related to dress codes. Dress codes involving special events, where students were expected to look nice, were especially distressing. Comments that girls should wear X and boys should wear Y caused trauma. It offered no validation of what would be appropriate or beautiful for a gender nonconforming student. This code seemingly forced the nonbinary students to pick one identity or the other. At Katie’s promotional ceremony into middle school, Katie’s biological sex dictated that a dress was expected. I was able to negotiate for a unique in-between option, but this, too, caused trauma: because it had to be lobbied for, because once again they were different from their peers.
Scar 3: Katie endured trauma related to pronoun usage. Katie experimented once with a new pronoun at school. Of note, the incident involved a teacher who was one of Katie’s favorites. Regardless, the teacher at that time was unfortunately ill-informed about gender nonconforming pronoun usage. Katie asked one of their classmates, and dear friend, to refer to Katie by a gender nonconforming pronoun. The friend complied. But, as a result, the friend was sent to the principal’s office. While it is likely Katie’s teacher thought her actions were helping to protect Katie, she wasn’t. Instead, the teacher was merely demonstrating a lack of education on gender nonconforming pronoun usage. Katie’s experience demonstrates that even the best educators need more education on gender inclusive pronoun usage. Here, Katie was vulnerable, felt badly following the incident, and quickly reverted to using the pronoun “she” again – even though it did not fit their identity.
Again, the above incidents could have occurred in any school with any teacher in our community. The scars created at school impacted my child, but they could involve your child, or a friend of your child who may be struggling to survive. I urge school board officials, in all districts, to prioritize saving lives. While gender-inclusive policies may at times seem burdensome, such burdens pale in comparison to the burden of losing a child.
Pam Kohlmeier is dually licensed as a physician and an attorney and has resided in Spokane since 2005. Kohlmeier served as an emergency physician and lecturer for a Master of Public Health program prior to becoming an attorney.
Does He Actually Have to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue?
Electing a representative to any prominent position in government requires projection, the ability to imagine, at least deep down somewhere, that the person for whom you cast your ballot shares your values, that they will study the issues (just like you would—if you only had the time and interest), and that they will vote in government the way you would vote.
It follows that being a successful politician requires that one studiously avoids taking any stand that might alienate any block of voters upon whom you depend to win the next election. There are two corollaries:
Every politician will quietly rejoice when the media (and their voters) don’t ask the hard questions at all. This is the issue addressed in this email.
The best of circumstances arises once you’ve figured out a messaging means, like McMorris Rodgers’ targeted emails, of fostering your extremist voters ability to project while independents and less extreme voters can discount or totally ignore the message you feed your extremist wing.
Last Friday, the leader of the Republican Party, the presumed frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, and, so far, the only declared candidate, Donald Trump, declared on his “Truth Social” social media site that such “Massive Fraud” had occurred in the 2020 election that it justified “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. Here’s the full message, lest anyone wonder if the quote were taken out of context:
Absorb that: former President called to “terminate…the Constitution”. The context was his effort to play up a nothing-burger about the 2020 election pushed by Elon Musk on his newly-purchased Twitter platform. (The best write-up of that context [and why it’s a nothing-burger] that I’ve seen is Robert Hubbell’s “What the heck just happened?)
Those of us who read Hubbell’s Today’s Edition Newsletter or Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse or Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American (or all three) were apprised of Trump’s plea to put aside the rules and regulations of the U.S. Constitution, make him President once again, and the details of the Twitter context that elicited his outburst. Were independents and political moderates made aware of Trump’s outrageous sedition by the standard media?
The headline of the Spokesman article covering Trump’s statement? “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election” was buried on page A13 in the lower right hand column in the Sunday, December 4th, Spokesman—an article purchased from the Washington Post. The headline was NOT “Trump calls to suspend the U.S. Constitution”. Instead, the headline hints at a minor tiff between the White House and the former President.
This takes us back to politicians and projection. If the average citizen isn’t even aware of Trump’s sedition (See P.S.) one cannot expect the average Republican politician to step up and call it out. After all, if, like “our” McMorris Rodgers (U.S. Representative from CD5, eastern Washington), a significant portion of your voting base thinks Trump is a virtual deity, you will wish for Trump’s words to be buried, and, if confronted, you will do anything you can to weasel out of issuing a direct repudiation. Surely you will not volunteer a statement unless you are hard-pressed.
Every time McMorris Rodgers’ name appears in electrons in the media I receive a “Google Alert” email. I waded through all nineteen “Alerts” dated after Trump’s sedition. Did she comment? Crickets. Statement on her website? Nothing. If she, and other Republicans, are not pressed hard for answers they will ignore the sedition of their presumptive leader and move on as if nothing had happened.
There are several things you can do: 1) Add you name with mine to this petition on Change.org 2) Call McMorris Rodgers’ local Post Street office at 509-353-2374 and ask for her comment 3) Or take this advice from Joyce Vance:
Let’s keep the heat on them this week and for as long as it takes. You can call (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak with your senators and representatives. Don’t forget email, postcards, letters and calls to district offices too, in addition to social media and requests for in-person meetings. They’ll be keeping track of the calls and other incoming messages this week. Sometimes they need to be reminded that they work for us, and that no matter how difficult they make it, we’re committed to voting in our elections to keep it that way.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. From wikipedia (the italics are mine): Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws.
As a county resident I might assume from that headline that I was just saved hundreds of dollars by the fiscally responsible action of the Spokane County Commissioners—who, at great effort—managed not to raise property taxes in these inflationary times. Careful reading of Mr. Tiernan’s article suggests a different, and more truthful, headline that you will never see: “Spokane County commissioners voted not to raise the median Spokane County property owner’s 2023 tax bill by—wait for it—seven dollars”. One might argue that foregoing a seven dollar rise in the 2023 property tax bill for the average Spokane County property owner isn’t even worthy of news coverage, much less a headline hinting that Spokane County Commissioners Al French, Josh Kerns, and Mary Kuney (all Republicans) had just saved county taxpayers a devastating rise in their property tax bill.
The calculations and legal constraints imposed on local Washington State governments as they puzzle out how to balance their budgets are bewilderingly complex—rife with opportunity for misrepresentation and misunderstanding. A visit to the local social media site Nextdoor offers a window into the confusion around coverage of the recent tiff between the City of Spokane City Council and Mayor Woodward over whether to take legally allowed one percent increase in the City’s property tax levy. Here’s an example from a Mr. Dow of Altamont Heights:
Who else has done the math? Ready for dollars per day increase in property tax? Yup 1% property tax increase. Rent will go up again! Possibly by hundreds. And for what? I’m sure the Spokane city council could cut out some useless items, and find the funds. Nope, they pass it on to us.
He “did the math” alright, and, in so doing, got it totally wrong, not that, given the news coverage and the complexity of the topic, that he should be much faulted for his misunderstanding. Scarier were the dozens of comments that followed on Mr. Dow’s post as others piled on. The overall tone of the comments was at least “Vote them out!” with some comments verging on “Bring out your pitchforks, string them up!”
The headline of the news article in the Spokesman by Emry Dinman that Mr. Dow is playing off of is as bad as Mr. Dow’s math, “Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward vetoes City Council-approved 1% property tax hike”. Isn’t a “1% property tax hike” pretty clear? You might be excused for simply multiplying your last year’s tax bill by 1% (0.01). Let’s say that last year’s bill was close to an average $4000. The terrifying “City Council-approved 1% property tax hike” is then $40. First, note $40 is not “hundreds” as Mr. Dow inflammatorily suggests, but that isn’t even the right calculation.
The “hike” of the headline is a one percent rise in the City of Spokane’s total levy amount, the amount of money in dollars that the City can collect in property taxes the following year spread out among all the property within the City limits. For Spokesman subscribers who actually read the article, its author, Emry Dinman, even writes “a cost of a few dollars to most property owners”, NOT the “hundreds” of Mr. Dow’s post. But the damage is done. Thanks to these headlines and the spreading misinformation/miscalculation on Nextdoor some number of folks will bolster their internal anti-tax, anti-government, anti-one-particular political party narrative.
The trouble with all this is with the required messaging. Frequent few-word, subtle misinformation like “1% property tax hike” (intentional or not) leaves a lasting impression in the minds of people who lack the time, resources, and inclination to puzzle out the full story. Any time the counter to a simplistic (and wrong) statement requires paragraphs to explain, the person offering the counter argument starts at a distinct disadvantage. Trying to understand and then explain the complexity of property tax determinations in the State of Washington is mind-bendingly daunting.
That said, here are a few relevant concepts to keep in mind:
Any increase in property taxes in Washington State that will appear on your tax bill is constrained by multiple legal limits on the taxing authority of the (many) taxing districts in which your property is located. Big changes in the average property tax bill cannot happen without voter approval.
The assessed value of your property is relevant to your next year’s tax bill only in proportion to the assessed value of all the property contained in a particular tax district’s boundaries. Imagine a tax district in which the assessed value of every property doubled from one year to the next year. For simplicity, let’s also assume that the allowed 1% levy rise was NOT voted in. In this case of a doubling of the assessed value of each and every property, the levy rate (expressed as dollars per thousand of assessed value) would be cut in half—and the taxing district would collect the same total dollar value in property tax as it did the year before. However, in the unlikely event that the assessed value of your property doubled while the value of all the rest of the property in your taxing district stayed the same, your particular property’s tax bill would double while everyone else’s remained the same. (There are caveats to all of this, but none of them would materially affect the conclusions.)
Also, keep in mind that in Washington State the total tax bill paid on a property is made up of levy rates determined by multiple overlapping tax districts, each multiplied by the assessed value, not just, for example, the levy rate imposed by the City of Spokane. To explore this, look at your detailed property tax bill (or access the details of your property by entering your address at https://cp.spokanecounty.org/scout/map/ and clicking “View more parcel information” on the page you see.
This is the sort of material that ought to be taught in a combined “practical math plus civics” course in high school—and offered to all citizens.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For more (and perhaps clearer) examples of how levy rates and assessed values inter-relate see Calculating the Property Tax Levy.
The votes are in and counted. Last Tuesday, November 29, Spokane County, in a meeting that ordinarily attracts little notice, certified the results from the November 8th general election. Most local voters thought the results of this year’s general election were settled a couple of weeks ago. News coverage has moved on, even though the results were unofficial until Tuesday’s certification meeting. (You can inspect the certified results here. Use the Command-Find keys [CMD-F] on your computer to locate specific candidates and races.)
At last Tuesday’s certification meeting of the Spokane County Canvassing Board one could still hear local echoes of Trump’s Big Lie, Dinesh D’Souza’s bogus “documentary” 2000 Mules. (2000 Mules was widely distributed locallyby an unidentified political operative), Flynn’s ReAwaken America Tour, and, of course, the local Republican Party’s pushing the narrative of election fraud. The most prominent representative of the SpokaneGOP’s effort is, of course, Bob McCaslin, Jr., the losing candidate for Spokane County Auditor and the only candidate to appear as an observer at the canvassing board’s certification meeting.
The certification meeting included a 15 minute Open Public Forum segment at which six people spoke. Five of the six were from the SpokaneGOP asking that the board vote against certifying the election. Matt Hawkins, the Spokane County Republican Party’s state committeeman, requested a revote or hand count of the auditor’s race that McCaslin lost by 1183 votes. To request a “revote” is a preposterous grandstand, but, let’s consider a manual recount. The statutory trigger for a hand recount in a non-statewide election for this particular race would be a difference of only 546, far less than 1183. (See P.P.S. for details.) If Mr. Hawkins were actually convinced that a hand recount would produce a different result he could use the legal mechanism in the RCW to request (within two days of the certification) and obtain a hand recount at his expense. There are no reports that Mr. Hawkins has made such a request. Apparently Mr. Hawkins faith in his suspicion of faulty ballot counting is insufficient for him to risk his money on a recount. (The payment is refunded if the recount changes the result of the election.) [LAST MINUTE UPDATE: The Spokesman reports this morning that McCaslin requested a partial hand recount of the ballots from five precincts in the Eagle Ridge area in which the original count was not in his favor. The partial hand recount will cost him (or his backers) a few thousand dollars. It is uncertain what he expects to accomplish. One wonders if he and his backers are such true believers in the election fraud narrative that they expect a blockbuster reveal of miscounting that would drive a mandated recount of the entire contest.]
Alene Lindstrand, another of the commenters, claimed (among other complaints), in spite of the Risk Limiting Audit, that no meaningful election audit was performed. Ms. Lindstrand is a perennial purveyor of complaint and suspicion, including arguments against fluoridation. Ms. Lindstrand ran for Spokane County Auditor against incumbent Vicky Dalton in 2014 and lost by nearly 18 percentage points in the general election.
The other three GOP commenters raised similar questions and requests, all without evidence. One, a Mr. Tim Kinley, videoed the meeting with his smartphone.
The November 8 general election’s now-certified results in Spokane County(for statewide results click here) show a relatively high ballot turn-in rate for a mid-term (middle of the four year presidential term) election. A total of 222,676 ballots were counted in Spokane County from among 359,764 registered voters (an election “turnout” of 61.9%).
“Ballots counted” and “election turnout” aren’t quite the same. Seven hundred and thirty-five ballots were rejected because the postmark on the outer envelope was after election day (November 8). There’s a lesson here: Do your homework and vote early or, if you’re voting on election day, either deposit your ballot in a drop box before 8PM or pay close attention to the pick-up times on the mailbox in which you put your ballot.
Another reason to vote early is this: 3374 Spokane County voters in this election were sent letters notifying them that if they wanted their votes to be counted they needed to take additional steps to “cure” signature issues. Of those 3374 voters, 49% (all but 1705) voters took the prescribed action to cure their ballot so the envelope could be opened and their (now anonymous) ballot could be entered into the counting system. If you turn in your ballot in the late rush it may take a while to receive the letter notifying you of the problem. When one of the election contests on the ballot is really close political parties obtain publicly available lists of voters whose ballots require curing. The parties match names with other publicly available data that might suggest party sympathy and then make efforts to encourage people to go to the trouble of curing their ballot. Remember that if you turn in your ballot early you can check to see that your ballot has been accepted by visiting vote.wa.gov.
In Spokane County in this November 8 general election the final numbers show that 2443 people’s efforts to vote were rejected either for signature or witness problems that they didn’t (or couldn’t) cure—or on account of a late postmark. In the closest race on the ballot, the Spokane County Auditor’s race, the number of votes separating the candidates was 1183. Given that even if all these 2443 ballots had been cured, 1813 of them (74%) would have to have been votes for McCaslin to make up the difference. The odds of a 74% edge for McCaslin showing up in those cured ballots is vanishingly small. But in a closer election… Moral: Vote early and make sure your ballot is accepted.
One final remark: The election irregularity folks from the GOP conveniently ignore that every “Prefers Republican Party” candidate who ran for a Spokane County-wide office subject to the voting of all the voters in Spokane County, every one of them, other than Bob McCaslin, won their contest. In LD-4 (Spokane Valley), McCaslin’s election conspiracy counterpart, Rob Chase, lost his state representative seat to fellow Republican Leonard Christian. Mr. Christian’s opinion on local election integrity?
“If (the county auditor )is cheating, why are all the county spots Republicans?”…
Christian said he has observed the election process, and though he does not believe it is perfect, it is secure.”
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. The canvassing board is a three-member board made up of a designee from the Spokane’s County Commission, the Auditor’s Office, and the Prosecutor’s Office. This year those designees are Mary Kuney, Randy Bischoff, and John Grasso, respectively. Minutes for the November 29th meeting are here. More details on the canvassing board’s makeup can be found in the minutes for its November 22nd meeting. (Other minutes for the board can be accessed here.)
P.P.S. “If the difference in the number of votes cast for the apparent winner and the closest defeated candidates is less than 150 votes and less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast for both candidates” a hand recount is triggered. In the Spokane County Auditor’s race that is (108,631+109,814)*0.0025=546.
The Local Politics of Washington State Property Taxes
The math is pretty straightforward. Cities in Washington State are limited to a one percent increase in property tax (without engaging in a complicated, lengthy, expensive, and uncertain referendum). Meanwhile, monetary inflation in the current year looks like it will run around eight percent. It doesn’t require a math whiz to see the consequence: if revenues can only expand by one percent and prices rise by eight percent what can be accomplished within that budget will have to shrink (or other sources of revenue must be found). Furthermore, even at the Federal Reserve’s target long term inflation rate of two percent, taking the allowed one percent increase in property still shrinks the buying power of the property tax portion of revenues by a net one percent.
This is a simplification. There are other sources of city revenue, but all of them eventually come out of the pockets of local residents. In addition to property taxes, other major sources of municipal revenue are: retail sales and use taxes; the business and occupation tax (a pass through to the consumer in the form of higher prices); and city utilities charges (see page 13 of the proposed 2023 budget). Nevertheless, if a budget is going to keep up in buying power and one of the sources of its revenue (property taxes) is constrained to one percent per annum increase, then the money is going to have to come from an increase in some other revenue source—or the buying power will, of necessity, shrink.
In recent weeks articles have appeared in the Spokesman that discuss votes taken by the City of Spokane and the City of Spokane Valley City Councils and the Spokane County Commissioners on the state-law-allowed one percent rise in property taxes for the coming year. The City of Spokane’s City Council passed the one percent increase on a vote of 5-2, with Councilpersons Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle voting “nay”. Five to two is a veto-proof majority. Consequently there is no risk of budgetary consequences for Mayor Nadine Woodward to issue a veto. Her quoted statement on the veto is pure political posing:
“I decided to not include the tax increase to give families a break during an economic climate that has seen prices rise dramatically due to inflation and brought on fears of a recession going into the next year,” she wrote. “As our citizens tighten their budget, now is not the time to ask more of them.”
This is disingenuous bovine excrement, and the Spokesman ought to be ashamed for giving her a prominent platform from which to spew it without calling her out. If Woodward, Bingle, and Cathcart want to claim they’re being kind and offering relief by forgoing the one percent state-authorized property tax rise when we face eight percent inflation, they should explain either 1) what other source of revenue will make up the shortfall or 2) what city service or program they plan to cut in order to balance the budget.
P.S. The one percent per year limit to the increase in property taxes in the State of Washington was first put up and passed as Initiative 747 in 2001 with nearly 58% of the vote. I-747 was filed by CPAC-lauded, anti-tax advocate Tim Eyman of Mukilteo and Leo and M.J. Fagan of Spokane. In 2007 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled I-747 unconstitutional, saying the ballot language misled voters about the initiative’s substantive effects. However, given the initiative’s prior 58% approval, the limit was soon re-instated by the legislature in a special session.
P.P.S. The one percent restriction does NOT guarantee that every individual property tax bill is limited to just a one percent increase year-over-year. Instead, it restricts the growth of total property tax revenues year-to-year. Individual property tax bills are determined by the interplay of assessed value changes AND changes in rate. For a detailed (and clearer) explanation of how this works read this from the Department of Revenue. If you really want to get into the weeds of the complex regulations around property taxes in the State of Washington the best resource is the Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC). MRSC is a non-profit organization based in Seattle with a mission of “supporting effective local government in Washington through trusted consultation, research, training, and collaboration”. This is the resource used by many local elected officials to help them understand the rules. Read here and here.
P.P.P.S. One fine point: There are two “one percent” limits, which is confusing. The first is a Washington State Constitutional limit (Article VII, section 2) dating from 1972. That one percent cap, as I understand it, limits aggregate property taxes on an individual parcel to no more than one percent of the parcel’s assessed value, e.g. $1,000 on a home and lot assessed at $100,000. The other one percent limit, known as the “Levy Increase Limit” or the “Levy Lid” (RCW 84.55), is the one percent limit on tax increases discussed in this post, the Levy Increase Limit that evolved from Eyman’s I-747 anti-tax effort of 2001.
