High court protects tax eaters from Eyman — and the voters

A century ago, a fictional fellow named Marvin T. Dooley famously said the U.S. Supreme Court "follows th' iliction returns." However, the Washington Supreme Court — an elected court — has gone out of its way to take away a thing the people wanted.

In 2001, voters approved Tim Eyman's Initiative 747. It limited each taxing district's take from existing properties to a 1-percent increase a year. It was a popular idea, and passed in every county but King and Whitman, winning 58 percent of the vote.

The court, in an opinion written by Justice Bobbe Bridge and signed by Susan Owens, Barbara Madsen and two pro tem justices, said citizens who voted for the 1-percent lid had been "misled." We had voted for 1 percent, and the court gives us 6 percent-or-inflation.

Why did the court do that? Did the 1-percent limit violate the state constitution? No; the people can have whatever lid they want. Was I-747 poorly written? No; Eyman had retained a future Supreme Court justice, Jim Johnson, to write it, and Johnson had not made any mistakes. I-747 was short and simple: 1 percent.

That was misleading, Justices Bridge, Madsen and Owens said, because the court itself had changed the existing tax lid during the campaign year. The existing lid had been 2 percent — another Eyman initiative the voters had approved — and the court had thrown it out and replaced it with the old lid, 6 percent or inflation. Some of the voter materials for the proposed 1-percent lid had not been changed. People might think they were reducing 2 percent to 1 percent when really they were reducing 6 percent to 1 percent.

Not all the justices bought this unsober argument. In a dissent signed by Justices Gerry Alexander, Tom Chambers and Richard Sanders, Justice Charles Johnson wrote, "No reasonable argument can be sustained that voters were in any way misled or confused by the effect of I-747, which expressly and was specifically aimed at lowering the tax growth to 1 percent. The majority seems to suggest that the voters are unable to think or read for themselves. ... "

Just so. If the justices thought voters were misled, how about in the campaigns for them? Recall last year's judicial campaigns, and the junk ads in the mail and on TV. Perhaps the majority justices might apply their ruling to themselves.

Anyway, there it is. The 1-percent lid is swept away as if it never existed. Every taxing district in Washington suddenly has the power to make up for six years of tax restraint. Some districts, like Seattle, Bellevue and the Port of Seattle, already had "banked" some unused tax capacity. Now they have more. Others had used every nickel allowed. Now the Washington Supreme Court gives them a Christmas present.

Some politicians are now calling for the Legislature to take away these presents before they can be opened. But Scott Noble, King County assessor, says a special session would have to do it by Nov. 30 in order to affect taxing authority in 2008. A bill that passes in January will limit tax rates in 2009.

Whatever others do to nullify its effects, the ruling itself remains a precedent. The state's highest court has overturned a ballot initiative not because it does anything unconstitutional, but because the justices decided the voters were "misled."

This is not a legal opinion. It is a political opinion. The court is defending tax-eating constituencies from Eyman, and from the voters.

Last week, urban voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties rejected an increase in the sales tax to 9.5 percent and a doubling in the car-tabs tax. Statewide, voters approved Eyman's Initiative 960, which makes it slightly more difficult for the Legislature to raise taxes.

Two days later, after the voters resisted new taxes, came the ruling sweeping away I-747. Perhaps the timing was accidental. Then again, maybe the majority justices just didn't want to provoke voters over what the court had done.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is seattletimes.com">bramsey@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com