The last paragraph, copied here, is by far the most important:

"Don't tell me how bad it's going to be without car-tab revenues; explain how you defend the current tax. If a tax is unfair at its core, a free people have the right to repeal it."

Obviously, those who oppose this initiative, particularly those who trot out the false "Founding Fathers" argument, are incapable of understanding this simple, shining truth.

Posted at 06:23 a.m. PDT; Monday, October 18, 1999 James Vesely / Times Staff Columnist Panic in the streets: the car tab arguments

MORE than five years ago on these pages, a terrific newspaperman was blowing the whistle on the state's car-tab tax. Columnist Don Hannula, who kept his pulse on the average guy as much as anyone I ever knew, understood the fee the state took on car and truck licensing was a powder keg.

It still is a powder keg, not because people are stingy or greedy or just looking out for themselves, but because it's unfair. That sense of unfairness, of being taken for granted, of being played as a sucker, is at the heart of the vote in favor of I-695.

Like many others, I first looked at the initiative and thought it tore the guts out of government - too much so. If I-695 passes, the consequences could be pretty harsh.

King County Executive Ron Sims was in here the other day with the county's budget director and the predictions were, in the language of the moment, dire. Sims said layoffs of county employees are coming. He said transit pickups - the number of times a bus will stop for a rider at a bus stop - may drop as much as one third. A third less bus service doesn't sound good to me. Sims was sober and careful. I didn't see much exaggeration of the impacts of I-695 he saw coming. I take the man at his word that services will shrink.

Gov. Gary Locke is worried about the same cuts and on Friday announced if we'll let the state off the hook this time, they'll fix the car-tab fees. He says tab fees should be closer to market value of the vehicle, something people could have told him years ago.

What's nagging me about the arguments against I-695 is that until recently, all the opposition has been built on the serious impacts coming when the high tab fees end. You'll be sorry, goes the argument, when you don't have the government services you need. The other argument is that a vote in favor of I-695 is greedy, the familiar guilt stanza that accompanies any vote on tax reduction.

I can see the need for a stiff excise tax on cars and trucks. I think most people would if they were explained, and if the tab fees had a tangible relationship with real life. They don't now.

As everyone knows, the state places a value on your car or truck that's a book value, even if you paid less. And as every driver knows, you pull out of the lot and the value drops like a stone - just like the first one on your windshield. The state still keeps the book value up to squeeze the most out of the fee structure. This is tax policy the Sheriff of Nottingham would understand.

Instead of being greedy, as we are being told as if we were children, voters recently have been remarkably generous with their tax dollars.

People always vote their self-interest, but that self-interest often coincides with tax increases. Just looking at the past few months, Eastside voters put up serious tax dollars for their communities. In Issaquah, voters added almost $70 million to their bills for school capital budgets and another $7.9 million for technology. Voters approved that by margins of over 60 percent. The Lake Washington School District passed one of the largest tax bites in its history last year: $55 million for operations, $46 million for capital costs and technology, and a whopping $160 million for school remodeling. That's not the vote of cheapskates.

In Seattle, a $156 million central and neighborhood library bond issue was approved. Most likely, Seattle voters will buy a fancy new Seattle performance center and neighborhood community centers this November with their taxes. Voters all over the region said yes to nearly $4 billion of their dollars for a mass-transit plan. In all, said the July 18 edition of The Seattle Times, the region has seen an $8 billion investment in tax dollars since 1995.

This is not evidence of Lexus greed. Homeowners are paying more in real-estate taxes now than ever, but there's no sign of a rising tax revolt.

The pleas - and they are pleading - from leaders of government, the media, big business and concrete makers is that the system can't go on without the infusion of dollars from the car tax.

But we can't defend an unfair tax on the basis that it is a cash cow. Dissatisfaction with the hog-ugly unfairness of the tab fees was as easy to hear coming as a bowling ball. Whether through inertia or lack of spunk, no one in authority was willing to get it fixed.

Push away the cobwebs and no matter how you look at the car-tab fees, the way they are collected is out of kilter with people's intuitive understanding of household economics. If the fees were stiff, but set according to how car prices move, we wouldn't be in this mess. As it stands, out of fear of the future, we are asked to defend a tax intentionally miscalculated.

Don't tell me how bad it's going to be without car-tab revenues; explain how you defend the current tax. If a tax is unfair at its core, a free people have the right to repeal it.

James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Monday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com

-- Westin (86se4sp@my-deja.com), October 18, 1999

Answers

Looks like even the newspapers are deciding not to be on the losing side of this argument. More and more are backing off on their early anti-695 rhetoric. Just in time for the absentee ballots to go out too.......

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), October 18, 1999.

I wonder if any of either newspaper's (Times and P-I) advertisers are putting the heat on.

-- Jim Cusick (jccusick@att.net), October 18, 1999.

Westin

We only gave voluntarily $8 billion whats wrong with us? Must be our selfish, screw the government, we dont want to pay tax attitude. This is just more proof of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This small amount will surely mean that the CHILDREN and OLD PEOPLE will DIE. I mean what can our state do with a measly $8 billion.

We need to give more so that all the poor drive new Lexus and SUVs like the rest of us. We need to ban guns, put more taxes on cigarettes, raise the price of alcohol, wire every kid for the internet, put chips in the homeless to track them (Seattles idea not mine), build new public housing that people arent ashamed of living in, have free health care for everyone no matter if their working or not, raise the minimum wage to $20 a hour so the working poor will not be stigmatized by low pay.

How can all these great things happen if the people of this state are only willing to give up $8 Billion.

Ed  I feel ashamed to be an American

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 18, 1999.

You should Ed. Because your not.

-- (mkpow62@silverlink.net), October 18, 1999.

"You should Ed. Because your not. " What you gonna do, mon? Deport him because yo do not like his politics?

-- zowie (zowie@hotmail.com), October 19, 1999.

Why Mikey...

How.... UNION of you!

Westin

"My first pledge will be to restore integrity to the White House. And I'll fire anyone who has lied to the American people or the United States Congress." - Al Gore, in a February 2, 1988 presidential debate.

-- Westin (86se4sp@my-deja.com), October 19, 1999.

Mike/Chez

"You should Ed. Because your not."

so your american then me? is the 62 your new I.Q.

Ed - gave more to charities the last 4 years than Al Gore

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.

Mike/Chez

"You should Ed. Because your not."

That should have said -

so your more american then me? is the 62 your new I.Q.

Ed - gave more to charities the last 4 years than Al Gore

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.