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Changes to Sales Tax Resale Certificates (SB 6173)
The Senate budget assumed a change in how sales tax resale certificates worked. As the bill implementing this idea came over from the Senate it made substantial changes to how resale certificates work for retailers and wholesalers (which was fine) but also made a change I found punitive to how resale certificates worked for contractors…
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Eastside state representatives vote no on 520 tolling legislation
Reps. Eddy and Hunter say legislation does not address key issues related to funding, process or Eastside projects For immediate release April 17, 2009 OLYMPIA – The Legislature today narrowly approved HB 2211 which authorizes early tolls to finance the SR 520 floating bridge and gives the Washington State Department of Transportation authority to spend…
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Tuition Increases?
The Seattle Times wrote an interesting article in this morning’s paper about the budget question facing us about higher education. Both House and Senate proposals do terrible things to the higher education system in Washington. It’s worth the read. We have to decide if we want to allow the universities to raise tuition, or just…
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HB 2343 – National Board Certification Bonus
HB 2343 does a number of ugly things to the K12 system as part of the terrible, devastating budget cuts to education and everything else the state does. One of the proposed changes is to permanently eliminate the inflation adjustment to the bonus we pay to teachers who have achieved National Board Certification. I do…
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National Popular Vote
The national popular vote proposal is an interesting approach to changing the 222 year old way we elect US Presidents.The idea is to have a compact between states totally more than 50% of the electoral college. We would all agree that we would allocate all of our electoral votes to the winner of the national…
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Misc. Budget Notes
I’ve answered a lot of mail on the budget so far. Some items come up over and over again – Adult family homes, family planning funding, Children’s Hospital, and the State Auditor and his I-900 audits. Here are some notes on these things. Family Planning There has been about $10 million in the state budget…
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Sad duty
This week all six legislators from the 45th and 48th districts sent a formal letter to the chair of the Transportation Commission asking that the NE 116th Street Bridge over Interstate 405 be renamed the “Kollin Nielson Memorial Bridge.” Kollin Nielson was a Project Engineer with the Kiewit Pacific Construction Company when he tragically lost…
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Tax Policy for the Internet Age
Tax downloads? What is he talking about? Let me explain. Today if you buy a copy of “Gladiator” at Barnes and Noble you pay sales tax on it. If you rent it from Blockbuster you pay sales tax. Rent from Netflix? Pay the tax. Download it from Amazon? Pay the tax. However, if you watch…
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Hobbesian Choices
The chairs of the House and of the Senate budget committees both introduced their budget proposals this week. The committees will vote on them soon, though none of us can say exactly when at this point. Typically the bills are introduced and passed in about 3 days. The minority party always whines that they don’t…