I believe I have hit upon the ultimate initiative to put all of Tim's vision into law. Correct me if I am wrong:

We are tired of the state wasting our hard earned tax-dollars as they see fit -- to subsidize baseball stadiums, trains without tracks, and ferries.

We believe that local people know how to spend local dollars.

We believe that the hard-working, tax paying citizen has more common sense that those bums in Olympia.

We believe that each and every community should be able to determine how our tax dollars are spent.

This may be an answer to the time and money it takes to pass all of these other initiatives just to get the state to do what is right and to stop taxing us every chance they get!

I propose the "Local Taxes for Local People" Initiative!

The basic idea is this: "All tax dollars raised in the State of Washington shall be distributed in exact proportion to the taxes paid by each county. No tax dollars shall be used to subsidize any other county without the approval of the voters in the county in which the tax dollars originated."

This would definitely get the attention of those _____s in Olympia and get control back to the people!!

-- Chris Henderson (yakimadude@operamail.com), March 15, 2000

Answers

Chris, It might be a good time to take a deep breath before a wise old adage comes into effect: "Be careful; for what you wish may indeed come true!" Many counties and municipalities in eastern Washington have their emergency and public services (fire, police, etc.) funded in part by a redistribution of sales tax revenues from the more populated counties of the State - particularly from King County. You might want to look into how much more sales (or other)tax some of the agricultural counties will need to pay to finance your wish. I don't think many farmers will relish even deeper shoveling from their already strained wallets.

-- Rudy Taylor (rtaylorcs@aol.com), March 15, 2000.