Vote no for positive changes

Eligible voters receive their Nov. 5 election ballots in the mail this week. While this is not the most significant election of our lifetime, it requires, as with every vote, thoughtful consideration of the candidates and issues. Our decisions do make a difference, including voting for alternative candidates or not voting.

There are four initiatives on the ballot. Please spend the necessary time to learn their purposes, consequences and who their sponsors are.

Brian Heywood is the money behind them. Last week this billionaire’s organization, Let’s Go Washington, was fined $20,000 by the state’s Public Disclosure Commission for failing to report subcontractors used by signature-gathering firms, as the law requires, to put the measures on the ballot. His initiatives are tainted, at least..

I-2109 ballot wording: “This measure would repeal an excise tax imposed on the sale or exchange of certain long-term capital assets by individuals who have annual capital gains of over $250,000. This measure would decrease funding for K-12 education, higher education, school construction, early learning and childcare.

“Should this measure be enacted into law?”

Anyone with over $250,000 in capital gains and who supports the large losses in tax revenue – $2.2 billion the first five years – will vote yes in their own self-interest.

The state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law. Last winter the state Legislature banned allowing a state income tax. That argument for voting yes in the state voters pamphlet is false: There is no stepping stone to an income tax in Washington.

Bottom line: a billionaire transplant gets fined for irregularities in reporting gathering signatures for a ballot measure that reduces his taxes and takes away funding from schools and childcare. Voting no can be an easy decision.

I-2117, if passed, ends the states carbon tax credit trading and strips billions out of the budget, decreasing “funding for investments in transportation, clean air, renewable energy, conservation and emissions reduction,” including the salmon habitat restoration grants reported on last week – and the electric Guemes Island ferry. Summarizing it takes 15 pages in the voter’s pamphlet, but the billionaire sponsor did not include contact information on its last page.

The one paragraph ballot summary states revenue loss will “reduce or eliminate funding for numerous programs and projects, including for: transportation emissions reduction; transit, pedestrian safety; ferry and other transportation electrification; air quality improvement; renewable and clean energy; grid modernization and building decarbonization; increasing the climate resilience of the state’s waters, forests and other ecosystems; fire prevention and forest health; and restoring and improving salmon habitat.”

A loss of $3.8 billion in funding the next five years ends or reduces funding, resulting in road, sea lane and legislative budget gridlock and effectively moving the state’s present and still growing population back into the 1990s. This is a vote to destroy or preserve the possibility of 21st century transportation systems and repairing the environment to bring back more salmon.

I-2124, if passed, ends universal employee coverage in Washinton state’s long term care insurance program., which is creating a fund that will provide up to $36,500 to those meeting its requirements. The “WA Cares” fund will be tapped by people who become disabled, ill or elderly after at least 10 years of paying into it. The state government has created affordable and guaranteed long-term coverage that depends on employee funding.

If the initiative passes, participation will become voluntary, many will stop paying the tax and WA Cares will fail to build the funding necessary to provide benefits.

A no vote preserves the program.

I-2066 will prohibit towns, cities and counties from enacting building codes that encourage electrification of home and building energy, slowing the transition to electrification in Washington.

It repeals a law applying to Puget Sound Energy that the utility plan for an eventual transition to renewable, low-emission energy sources.

Passing the measure will reduce the move toward electrifying the economy and allows for continued use of natural gas.

Our future is in clean energy. Fossil fuel use dooms us.

The League of Women Voters of Washington has analyzed these initiatives and opposes them. Read the League’s analysis of each at lwvwa.org/page-18781.