Two of the Washington State Legislature’s top leaders – Democratic House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon of Seattle, and Republican Senate Minority Leader John Braun of Centralia – sit down with host Austin Jenkins. Their reactions to election results in Washington, and their thoughts on the upcoming 2025 legislative session – including whether a looming budget hole might be filled via program cuts or new taxes.
Their takes on the defeat of three statewide ballot measures:
Fitzgibbon: “I think we really made the case to Washingtonians that not making the investments would also impact the cost of living. That not investing in our transportation system, not investing in improving air quality, not investing in wildfire prevention, you know, would also harm Washingtonians. And it was really clear, I think both in, over the course of campaign and then particularly with the results, is that’s something that people believed. People believe that being stuck in traffic is an impact to their quality of life. People believe that unsafe roads are an impact to their quality of life. People believe that wildfires, wildfires, particularly for those frontline communities, but also wildfire smoke for the entire state impact their quality of life. And so, I think that we did an effective job of communicating to Washingtonians what those trade offs would be…”
Braun: “I am absolutely convinced that if you could sit all 8 million or, you know, 5 million voters in our state down and, and really make them understand the initiatives, so they really understand what they did to themselves, to their families, to their communities, they would pass without a problem. But that’s not the world we live in. The world we live in is one that’s influenced by, you know, a somewhat confusing voters pamphlet, by an enormous amount of money spent on the no campaign, and people’s natural inclination when they don’t understand something is to vote no.”
On the upcoming legislative session and how to fill a projected state budget deficit:
Fitzgibbon: “I do think that we need to, to look at revenue. I think that our tax structure is, is clearly not keeping pace with the needs of our state. And if you just look at the K-12 school system, if you, any number of school districts will tell you very clearly that they, that their revenues are not keeping pace with the needs of their student populations or the needs of their workforce. So I do think that we do need to, to look at how can, how can we make sure that our tax structure is able to meet the needs of Washingtonians, because it doesn’t seem like it is today. I, I’m not gonna predict what those tools might be um, but I do think that that’s something that we need to work on.”
Braun: “The rumor mill is already out about the different sorts of taxes. You mentioned a wealth tax, there’s a payroll tax option out there, there’s a B&O tax option out there, there’s a REET tax, property taxes, so they’re talking about lots of different taxes, whether they have the votes to do that or not I don’t know, they don’t call me to, to check notes with me. But I don’t doubt that they’ll be out there. Uh, I think that they would be foolish to, to, to knee jerk to that as their solution. When you go back to the operating budget in particular, we can talk about the other budgets if you’d like, but the operating budget, and you say, how has this behaved relative to, to median income in Washington state over the last 10 or 15 years, and what you see is it’s doubled. You know our, our budgets for our, our households have gone up you know at a respectable rate. The state budget has gone up at double that rate. I don’t know how you look at that very fundamental number and say the answer must be we have to take more money from the folks who are going up about half of our rate. It just doesn’t make sense to me. We have a spending problem and we haven’t dealt with it…”
Plus, their thoughts on national election results, and more.
