Oregon Public Broadcasting

Next week, Washington voters will decide yet another Tim Eyman initiative.

Eyman is the state's anti-tax crusading initiative king. His latest offering is Initiative 1033. It would cap government revenues and cut property taxes.

He calls it a sensible check on government. Critics warn it would devastate public services and impede the state's recovery from the recession. Austin Jenkins has this voters' guide.

The origins of I-1033 go way back. First let's go to a heated floor debate in the Washington State Senate in April of 2005.

Lt. Gov Brad Owen: "The question before the Senate is the motion by Senator Prentice...."

Lawmakers are about to vote on a bill that will establish a new limit on state spending - based on a ten-year average of personal income growth. An angry Republican State Senator Joe Zarelli calls it a false cap.

Sen. Joe Zarelli: "It assures that never again will this body and the legislature as a whole ever have to operate with any kind of fiscal restraint in the budgeting process again."

Democratic State Senator Margarita Prentice has the opposite view.

Sen. Margarita Prentice: "This bill ensures a spending limit. This bill creates a spending limit tied to the economy in a way that economists recommend."

The party-line vote that day was significant. Its origins stretched back 12-years earlier. In 1993, Washington voters narrowly approved Initiative 601.

It capped state spending at inflation plus population growth. But over the years state lawmakers watered it down. Now the legislature was adopting a new ñ but less restrictive - formula for controlling spending.

Tim Eyman: "And we saw the outcome of that decision."

Tim Eyman: "We saw them create completely unsustainable budgets. They ended up over-extending themselves during the good times and that made the bad times even worse eventually leading to a nine billion dollar deficit."

I-1033 would reinstitute the inflation plus population growth cap. But it goes much further. Unlike 601, the limit would also extend to county and city governments. And 1033 has the added feature of requiring that revenues above and beyond the cap be refunded to property owners in the form of a property tax cut.

Eyman -- speaking recently before The Olympian newspaper editorial board -- said it's time once again to put a citizen check on growth in government.

Tim Eyman: "1033 takes the position that 601 worked, it can work again, let's bring back that same fiscal discipline and I think that's the main reason we're doing the initiative."

Washington's Office of Financial Management estimates I-1033 would reduce state coffers by $6 billion over the next five years. City and county governments would forgo another nearly $3 billion.

Even so, state government revenues would still grow -- at an average of three percent a year. But opponents of I-1033 say that's simply not enough. That it wouldn't keep up with the cost providing basic government services ñ especially as the state comes out of the recession.

Nora Gibson: "This was our main activity room of our adult day health center."

At Elder Health Northwest in Seattle, director Nora Gibson unlocks the door to an activity room that's now abandoned.

This is where elderly and disabled adults used to gather daily for companionship and, more importantly, therapy that kept them mobile. Not anymore. The program closed July 1st due to state budget cuts.

Nora Gibson: "And by my estimation we've had two people die as a result of the loss of this service and roughly twenty people who have lost their functional mobility ñ their ability to transfer, their ability to stand."

Gibson, whose organization opposes I-1033, says adult day health programs statewide were cut forty percent this year. A judge has since reinstated that reduction ñ at least for now. But Gibson argues ñ in the long-term - Eyman's initiative ignores the needs of aging baby-boomers.

Nora Gibson: "That growth is going to be and is beyond inflation, so by sort of capping at inflation and a small percentage it means we're going to be squeezing out services for older adults and services for children."

Opposition to I-1033 is robust. The coalition to defeat the measure includes more than 200 groups from the AARP to labor unions to Paul Allen's Vulcan Incorporated. Even the state's realtors association ñ which endorsed Eyman's 2001 cap on property taxes - is a no vote for I-1033.

Greg Wright - the group's president -- echoes the concerns of many opponents when he says it would lock-in state spending at recessionary levels.

Greg Wright: "Our association, we're all about encouraging government to live within its means, but at the end of the day we have a responsibility to make sure that the government is funded and this initiative didn't quite fit in with the policy that we think is in the best interest of the community's of Washington."

Eyman responds that his initiative has a safety valve: if lawmakers want to exceed the revenue limit they can ask voters for permission.

He also notes he's got 315,000 individual endorsements -- that's the number of voters who signed petitions to get I-1033 on the November ballot. Washington voters have passed eight of Eyman's initiatives over the past nearly 12 years. He's hoping I-1033 will be his ninth win at the ballot box.

Online:

Yes on I-1033

No on I-1033