Fighting initiatives is like mud wrestling with a pig. You're both getting dirty, and the pig's LOVIN' IT!

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Fighting initiatives is like mud wrestling with a pig. You're both getting dirty, and the pig's LOVIN' IT!

From KUOW: The legislative session has also unleashed a host of citizen initiatives. On property taxes, for example. State lawmakers talked a lot about a reduction, but in the end did nothing. Initiative sponsor Tim Eyman thinks that'll help his measure limiting property tax increases to two percent per year.

Eyman: "All they wanted to do was be able to say they did something. And they couldn't even walk away from this session saying that. So it was a really pathetic effort. And so now, obviously our initiative is going to take on that much more attraction."

Another initiative that grew from a legislative defeat would impose strict consumer privacy rules on banks, retailers, and the Internet. Public school teachers got no pay boost, so they're circulating petitions that would mandate automatic pay raises. A proposal to authorize independent public schools failed, so a charter schools initiative campaign is underway. All must gather about 180-thousand voter signatures by July 7th to qualify for the November statewide ballot. I'm Tom Banse in Olympia.

Now the reason the pig is loving it is this: Consider the teachers initiative. The teachers normally put a lot of money and shoe leather into electing the usual (liberal) suspects. Every dollar and minute of volunteer time they spend on their initiative is that much more effort that they won't have to give to their usual candidates. What's more, they'll be fighting the charter schools initiative like crazy, and that one is heavily bank-rolled by people who understand that the state can't live with the level of technical incompetence coming out of our K-12 system. That means that the teachers will be splitting their forces still further, increasing the likelihood that their measure will fail, their candidates will lose, and we'll get a charter school program anyway.

And Tim Eyman is right. The failure of the legislature to put up a viable alternative to I-695 in time to thwart it got us where we are today. The Legislature's unwillingness to make the hard decisions prior to the election certainly makes it more likely that his initiatives will get on the ballot, and force the legislature to again REACT because they didn't have the cojones to ACT.

Everyone's gonna get dirty, and the pig's loving it.

Mark

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), April 28, 2000


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