Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, has been hard at work submitting editorials all over the state in an attempt to justify her lawsuit to overturn tax and spend restrictions approved by Washington voters twice in the past 15 years.

After a showdown on Feb. 29 over the Legislature’s inability to raise liquor taxes with a simple majority vote, she filed a writ of mandamus asking the state Supreme Court to overturn existing, voter-approved law by March 13 when the Legislature was scheduled to adjourn.

The face-off was contrived by legislative Democrats to set up a challenge to our state’s two-thirds legislative vote requirement for tax increases.

Fortunately the Supreme Court denied Sen. Brown’s request for expedited review.

Why would the Democratic leadership and its special interest backers want to dismantle the will of the people? An incoming $2.4 billion budget deficit may have something to do with it.

Legislators are in a morass of their own making. They have spent, promised and committed to a slew of new programs and policies for which they cannot pay. The tab is coming due and some legislators want to dig deep into the wallets of taxpayers rather than properly prioritize the money they have.

Brown’s grandstanding is curious given that the two-thirds requirement has been in place since 1993, when Initiative 601 was passed by voters. The Legislature could have removed the threshold at any time, but instead only suspended it in 2002 and again in 2005.

When passed in November, Initiative 960 reaffirmed the two-thirds requirement established by I-601. Rather than facing the political consequences of repealing it, Brown is asking the court to do it for her.

Her position on supermajority votes is astoundingly hypocritical. The Senate imposes various rules on itself that require supermajority approval, including Rule 53, which requires a 60-percent vote to adopt amendments to the budget.

That rule was exercised this session when senators tried to eliminate a $250,000 earmark for basketball tickets from the budget. From a strictly constitutional standpoint, the amendment should have passed since the majority threshold was reached. However, because of the Senate’s self-imposed 60-percent threshold, the amendment failed.

If the Legislature can adopt restrictions not in the Constitution, so can the voters.

Not only is Brown’s position hypocritical, but it also displays little knowledge of the state Constitution. I-601 does not improperly amend our Constitution, as Brown claims.

Article II, Section 22 establishes the majority requirement for passing a bill. The key phrase in the section is, “No bill shall become a law unless …” The passage does not read, “A bill shall become a law when …”

The section lays out the minimal constitutional thresholds that must be reached in order for a bill to become law. Contrary to Brown’s assertion, this phrase was put in as a floor not a ceiling. 

The people of Washington were faced with a critical question nearly 100 years ago when they were asked to approve the right of initiative in the form of the Seventh Amendment.

“Shall legislators … be the servants or the masters of the public?

The question was answered decisively when the people voted to approve the amendment. Today, the question is the same. Who should prevail? The state Constitution is clear. “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed ....”



Amber Gunn is the director of the Economic Policy Center at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia.