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Thank you.

Just as you were taking a breather from the midterm elections, here comes the 2023 legislative session.

It's a not number year, so that means we're strapping in for at least 105 days as a biennial budget is hammered out.

Every dot org under the sun has its wish list ready to go in a legislature where the Democrats control the House, Senate and governor's office.

So what can we expect?

That's the discussion next on Northwest.

Now.

Abortion really isn't under any serious threat here in Washington state.

But listening to a recent press conference convened by the state's legislative leadership, there's certainly the possibility that it might dominate the session.

This while the state spending is at an all time high and a possible recession is on the horizon.

Despite forecasts of increasing tax receipts.

So what's on the agenda?

We're talking with leaders from both sides.

Let's start with the Republicans and House Minority Leader J.T.

Wilcox.

First question I have for you is just as an outsider asking an insider, when you're in the minority, what does preparing for a session really look like?

I mean, what can you do?

Well, you'd be surprised.

And I think, first of all, you have to realize you can't just go out and implement an agenda which you have to do is in the back of your mind, know what your members want and you know what parts of those might be compatible with what the majority wants.

And then as long as you can keep them back of mind, you will find opportunities.

I just tell people, you launch these little ships out there on day one, which is early January, and you never know 105 days later which ones you know, you might be able to reel in.

I'm mixing my metaphors here, but you have to be much more aware of the opportunities that arise rather than knowing that you can make your own opportunities.

Let's talk about one of those ships, which is Power Washington.

I know it originates on the Senate side, but but I would say Senate or House, whoever the constituency is.

I think there's a considerable number of people in possibly even moderate Democrats and progressive, too, who are concerned about getting all electric fleet up and running on the state highways by 2035, who are concerned about having natural gas available to them in their homes, who are concerned about having effective air conditioning in the summer as the client, as the climate changes.

So is that one of the little ships that you think that might go out and be able to find some common ground?

What are you thinking about?

Well, that's a lot more than a little ship.

That's a big supertanker.

There's a lot of ways in Mary die.

Our House Republican lead on energy and the environment has also launched a plan called the Orca Plan.

It was introduced last year and we're not going to give up on that either.

And that is let's let's look at the resources that are available plan for the future to be sure that we have them and also, you know, use our revenues to make sure that we are, you know, both sensible and renewable.

And we're we're choosing our objectives in a scope that we can actually accomplish here.

And I think, you know, both House and Senate Republicans really believe in common sense conservativism and common sense conservation, which means you think through these things, you're not totally aspirational and you make sure that they're going to work within the resources that you have.

So I'm not stranded on the side of the road, is what you're saying with some time?

Well, yeah.

And let me expand on that a little bit.

You know, first of all, we don't believe that there's this dichotomy me that everything has to be binary, that you either are all natural gas or no natural gas.

There's a blend that makes sense.

There's also a role for hydrogen, most likely.

And it turns out that you can blend hydrogen and natural gas, and we've got some infrastructure that is capable of doing that.

We also have some dams that are important, but at the same time, we can develop other electrical resources as well.

I know you could probably unfurl a long scroll here if you wanted to, but what are the maybe top one or two things that are on on your agenda going in?

If you could say to yourself, well, I'd really like to have an honest discussion about this and this, what are those?

Well, I think, first of all, an honest discussion about public safety.

We need to get rid of the ideology in this.

We need to recognize that every kind of person in the state of Washington wants to have a safe family, a safe place to live, and a safe way to travel.

And we've done this in the past.

We've been a very safe, safe state in the past.

We tore it down a little bit.

Let's figure out how we can bring all those people together and promote public safety.

So Pursuit's, for instance, a little more officer discretion in the field.

Is that something you would like?

Absolutely.

And also a little more money for police as well, because we know that we are the least policed state in the United States.

And it's not because we don't have a need.

We know that we've got increasing violence.

So instead of talking about defunding police, let's figure out how we can have better trained and more police in the places that we need them.

Another area that, as you know, I've always cared about is let's have a rational conversation about our budget and also the means that are available to build a budget.

What's not to like?

Revenues are going up.

I look at the arrows they're all pointing up.

Right.

Is there's no concern about them rolling over.

I'm being facetious here.

Are you concerned about the sustainability of the state?

Well, I'm always concerned.

And, you know, the challenge with an increasing budget, especially in revenues, especially when they increase quickly, is it's really hard to change gears.

And the challenge is to change gears.

You heard a lot of people, unless you have have crafted a careful budget that understands that it's not going to be, you know, a positive outlook every year.

Every year.

Right.

We've got a problem going to be running somewhere around $80 billion a year.

And we're the in the nation.

We're the 11th highest per capita spending state in the nation.

Are we getting to a point or can we see from here a place where taxpayers need a break in Washington State?

Well, House and Senate Republicans have been saying that for a couple of years now.

We have huge growth in revenue when it comes to the state budget.

You know, the Bell Wave has inflation built into it.

So the government already has a way to cover inflation in the cost of government operations.

And unless you give some of those dollars back to the taxpayers of the state of Washington, they sort of come last in this whole equation.

And, you know, we think that we're here for the people and they should come first.

Big concerns, obviously, between progressives and conservatives when it comes to the income tax.

If the Washington Supreme Court comes through and says that, yes, capital gains or no capital gains are not income and and therefore taxable, or which way would the decision have to go?

I guess they would have to say that they are income and are therefore taxable.

Are you concerned at all about of a court ruling possibly paving the way for yet another run on an income tax at this state?

Well, absolutely.

And I don't think there's anyone serious who's been observing politics in Washington for very long that doesn't believe that if this tax becomes is declared to be legal, then an expansion of this income tax on capital gains is soon to come, and there will be a constant push to expand revenues for the state of Washington.

And you've already pointed out we're one of the most well-funded states in the country already.

Do you think there's any chance of that ruling came down?

Could that happen in this session where in 105 day session, we're in the long run?

Do you think it could happen or do you think.

No, there's no possible way that even even the Democratic Party could could get themselves organized in time to propose something like that?

Well, let's let's define what this looks like.

If this tax is found to be constitutional, we will then have a legal tax on income from capital gains.

Right.

So we will have that with absolutely no action on the part of the legislature.

I've heard that they're saying that there wouldn't move forward with additional income taxes.

Well, we've heard that before.

And nobody can bind future legislatures.

So would it be the year after or the year after that?

But I think it's much more likely is an expansion of this tax on capital gains that would reach many more taxpayers and perhaps increase the rate at which it's levy.

So you're talking about working its way down the income scale?

Sure.

Okay.

I want to make sure I understand you correctly about how you possibly see that going forward.

A lot of discussion on the Democratic side, too, about a major slate of legislation when it comes to abortion and abortion rights.

And if it was just one or two pieces of legislation, you'd say, okay, that can be quickly managed.

But again, it's it's a there are a lot of pieces that that underlie that from protecting access to gender affirming care and contraception and practitioners in state people, out of state people, geolocation, all kinds of things.

Is there any kind of a concern at all that that could end up hijacking a session in which a biennial budget has to be hammered out or or is one party rule to the point where it's going to go?

It's going to go quick anyway.

So it's not a concern?

Well, no, I don't take it for granted that things will go quick.

You know, part of the job of the minority is to make sure that they don't go quick.

We had a long time caucus council that once said, look, it's the right of the majority to pass what they want and it's within the power of the minority to determine how long it takes.

It's one of the things that you can do in the minority is slow things down.

I think that's an important service that the minority can provide.

You know, almost every year there is some kind of a of a litmus test on abortion that people on both sides want to have some kind of a vote counter.

And it's too bad that it gets politicized in that way, but it gets politicized from both sides.

What I would hope is that, you know, abortion is an issue on its own.

I don't have a litmus test in the House Republican caucus, and I don't know that everybody feels the same in the House Republican caucus.

But at the same time, let let's not take the contentious nature of that debate and expand it into a whole bunch of parts of life.

Because really, if we're to serve the public, it would be great if we could have ideology.

Occupy occupied a little smaller space rather than expanding it into everything.

Mhm.

Yeah.

And I think that's circles back to a little bit about my question about it.

Taking up is taking a suck in a lot of the oxygen out of the room in this session, particularly when it, you know, doesn't really appear to be anything or any particular threat in this state.

Well, it absolutely, you know, the state decided, based on a vote of the public a number of years ago, that it was going to be a state that allows abortion and the recent court case didn't make any change to that, in spite of the millions of dollars that were spent in campaigns to talk about that, I would say that that discussion is a little bit moot right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Last question for you.

I want to bring it back to Law and Order a little bit, something that you talked about maybe finding some common ground on the Blake decision.

You know, I think we know on one hand we can't arrest ourselves out of the drug problem.

I think on the other hand, though, you know, we're seeing the results of complete, you know, walking away from felony charges on possession and a lot of those kinds of things.

Do you see the Blake decision coming up in the legislature?

Is it an area that you think that maybe progressives and conservatives can possibly come together on when they see the results when we look at the streets?

You know, when when there's hardly a family in Washington that hasn't been touched by some tragedy involving the use of drugs, often some of the most damaging drugs that there are, it's almost incredible to think that we can't de-politicize that and come to some common sense places that that recognize that you're right, you can't arrest your way out of it.

It's not purely a public safety or a police or prosecution question, but you can't you can't take that out either.

Yeah, almost everybody has been around a family member who, you know, has has been touched by drugs and by the police or public safety.

And a lot of them are alive because there was that interface.

And yeah, and I'm related to someone who I think has been very open in saying I'm alive because I was arrested, I got clean and then I was asked to be in a program, we're told to be in a program and to not have you know, that is an option.

Just seems crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

JT Wilcox, thanks so much for coming in Northwest now.

Well, thanks for having me.

Joe Fitzgibbon represents the 34th District, including West Seattle and Vatican Island and was just elected the new majority leader in the House.

Joe, thanks so much for coming to the Northwest.

Now I want to start out with a little perspective here.

Democrats did well here in the state of Washington, picked up some seats.

What's your reaction to that?

How do you how do you take that election?

So I think we had a great election.

We went into this election expecting to be on defense because that's historically where you are.

When your party's in the White House, you tend to be on defense in that first midterm election after your party assumes the presidency.

So we expected to be on defense.

We were prepared for defense.

But I think we, our candidates and our incumbents did a really good job of defending the work that they've done.

So we actually are coming back with one additional seat in our House Democratic caucus.

Senate Democrats picked up a seat as well.

So I think that we really see that as a confirmation that if we haven't accomplished everything that we need to accomplish, that we're working on the right things.

I think the election also to some degree, we repudiated fringes on both sides.

With that in mind and from a good governance perspective, you've got the the tri trifecta going.

How do you still govern?

Well, though, in your leadership position, how do you still listen to the other party?

What are your plans for that?

How do you how do you bring a little detente to the table?

Yeah.

Well, I think you're right.

I think that some of the most extreme voices, you know, election deniers and so forth, are not going to be coming back to the House of Representatives.

I think that will really help at that.

At the end of it, we all need to figure out how to listen to the values, the perspectives, the priorities of the minority, and also recognize that the voters sent us to be us Democrats to be in the majority.

So I think we need to have good, honest conversations with one another and also recognize that there are going to be difference of opinions, there are going to be different priorities.

And that's okay.

That's part of the process.

Abortion is come up.

It was part of the governor's press conference on legislative priorities going forward.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't sense any great threat to it here in Washington State.

But when you look at the list of legislation, I mean, it is long.

It's not just necessarily kind of fighting the right to health care, but there's lots of other pieces in there.

As an outside observer, I think to myself, gosh, you know, this is the long session.

This is our big chance for a biennial budget.

Do you worry at all about that hijacking the session and and turning around and finding out, gosh, guys, it's mid-April, time to do a budget.

How do you how are you going to manage that as a house leader with so much political priority being put on that?

I definitely think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We can get more than one thing done in a long session.

Not everybody's working on the same things.

There's 98 House members, you know, all of who will be working on their own priorities.

I do think that some of the things that are sort of the most imminent priorities for protecting reproductive freedom, for example, protecting the privacy of women, using apps to to track their personal health, making sure that that information can't be shared for purposes of restricting reproductive freedom, particularly if they're from other states.

I was going to say now you're talking about other states are would lay that out for us a little bit of what the threat is there?

I think that we want to be sure that, for example, women who use apps to track their periods that if they're in another state, that the that that state couldn't, for example, subpoena the company that that owns that app and find out data about when the menstrual cycle began and therefore, whether or not that woman had terminated her pregnancy.

We want to be sure to protect against that happening.

We also want to be sure that that that women from other states where abortion has now been criminalized, that Washington is not extraditing them, is not sharing information, that Washington medical providers are not being required to share information with prosecutors in, say, Idaho.

So those are a few things that I know are in the works.

There's also a discussion around a constitutional amendment.

I think, you know, of course, we would need bipartisan votes in both chambers to get that done.

And so I think that's probably more of an uphill battle.

But I'm sure that conversation is going to happen, obviously, and I mentioned it before, with a long session, you get to dig in to the biennial budget, which is, you know, it's a lot it's a it's a it's both figuratively and literally in this state.

All the arrows seem to be pointing up.

Revenues seem to be going up.

Spending is also going up.

Are you at all worried or is there any discussion in the caucus at all about, hey, let's let's also think about doing something that's sustainable when we're talking about, you know, maybe, what, an $80 billion a year budget in the state of Washington?

Is that part of the discussion?

Absolutely.

And so sustainability of our budgets is one of those core values that we look through and trying to pass our budget.

And that's why you saw us in 2021 make big investments in paying down pension liabilities from years in the past, when the state legislature did not fully fund the obligations for public sector retirement.

We've really tried to pay that down as one of those long term obligations that we know costs us more money the longer we wait to pay it off.

So we have tried to make some of those one time investments to try to get ahead of those, you know, those those difficult cost drivers in the long term.

We we want to be sure that we're not outpacing, you know, outpacing revenue growth.

But we also have to be sure that state employees and then vendors who you know, for example, folks who run adult family homes are not being left behind by inflation.

So there are costs just like family households see experience, experience higher costs because of inflation.

Those vendors and therefore state government also experienced some of those costs.

So we have to make sure that we're keeping pace with inflation and that we're not outpacing the ability of the state to pay for the public services that we need.

Do you anticipate any areas or if you received feedback of me and I've had five people come up and talk to me about this.

Do you see any major programmatic growth taking place in this session, or is it mostly going to be to address inflation, address sustainability or no?

We've got some big, big ideas about programmatic growth.

You know, I think a lot of the areas that that may cost additional money do involve making sure that our existing public services are working better.

So, for example, special education is one area that we've heard a lot of desire from school districts, from parents, from from educators, from from students to see more investments.

I don't know if I would consider that, you know, big growth.

I would consider that doing better with things that we're already required to do.

The behavioral health system is another example of that, where we we really do need to invest more in order to ensure that that system can even work at all the status quo.

It's just not really working for the people who are in greatest need of that care.

I say this tongue in cheek.

We do record this show.

So just just remember, I might play this clip backs of day, and I'm just messing with you.

If the Supreme Court, as you know, they're ruling on this case about whether or not capital gains are income or not, if the Supreme Court comes back and says, nope, not income, you're perfectly free to tax capital gains.

Do you think that we're going to see a move for a state income tax in this session or possibly a subsequent session?

I think that an income tax is a conversation that we would need a whole lot of buy in for, and I don't see us doing that in really short order.

I think we would need to have probably a long term process, a long term series of conversations before we figured out whether that was the right thing for our state, whether a corporate income tax or a personal income tax.

I think it's more likely that you'll see us be in try to implement successfully the capital gains tax that we passed two years ago.

But I don't think an income tax is the kind of thing you would ever see us pull out of a hat in a in a in a session without a really robust public conversation.

On the flip side of that, Supreme Court rules, yeah, it is an income.

You can't do it.

What gets blown up by that?

Has any of that money been kind of pre spent and earmarked or what?

What happens if that ruling comes?

Well, that would lead to some pretty severe challenges in areas like child care, behavioral health.

Those are some of the expanding access to and affordability of child care is something that we really prioritized when we passed the capital gains tax in 2021.

And so that would be something that we would need to figure out an alternative approaches for whether that was cuts to child care or or other revenue increases.

I hope that's not the situation that we're in, but we know access to child care, unfortunately, would be the thing that was most directly supported by the capital gains tax.

And that's where we would need to focus.

I'm going to ask this on behalf of the folks yelling at their TV screen when they watch this kind of a discussion.

But we rank 11th in per capita spending in the state.

Is there ever any discussion?

Would you entertain one?

Is there any room for an idea about reducing taxes, about rolling some property tax back to taxpayers if revenues keep going up?

I don't think they're going to I think they're going to roll over.

They've got inflation to fight.

That's my view on it, but it's not even part of the discussion.

Can that be discussed in this world?

Yeah.

So we.

So one of the things that we also did with the capital gains tax two years ago is we invested in the Working Families Tax rebate to really make sure that the poorest Washingtonians, hardworking folks who just are are burdened by our regressive tax structure with rest so heavily on the poorest people in our society.

We're having some help from the state and making ends meet.

I think that that is somewhere that we have tried to address that the tax burden that falls most heavily on on working people in our state, we have significant needs.

And when we hear, you know, in terms of our public education system, higher education, you've heard me talk about child care, behavioral health.

I think that we really want to be sure that the needs of the people of our state are being met and that the people that we're asking to pay more, as we did with the capital gains tax, are the people who can most afford it.

Philosophical question Is there ever enough money coming into state government?

I think that, yes, we do have to make sure that we're we're covering the needs of the people of our state.

And there will never be an end to people telling us, we think you should invest more in X or Y or Z. I think that coming out of the last couple of years where we've gone a long way to try to with with one time federal money to address one time needs, we recognize that housing, homelessness, behavioral health, public education, we think I think that we need to prioritize covering the the most emergent needs first and then.

But I there's certainly a time and place where we will feel like those needs have been met.

But I don't think that that's today.

Yeah.

If there's a house on fire, you're still going to put water on it here for a while.

Some specific ideas coming out of the Democratic caucus.

Increasing teacher and school staff pay, again, I might add, with retention salary hikes and recruiting bonuses.

I think a lot of people probably say to myself, Oh my gosh, we did McCleary, we've done all that.

I mean, look what we've done in the state budget, but every industry is experiencing a retention and recruiting problem.

So what's the thought there?

I think that's somewhere where we really need to focus in on that.

The greatest need schools, the greatest need positions, and the ones where we're having the hardest time with recruitment and retention.

There's no question any employer that you talk to is experiencing a workforce shortage right now.

This is not unique to state government.

It's you know, anybody who has had to hire somebody can tell you that it's harder to do that right now than it's been in a long, long time.

So that's why I think we should really focus our efforts on those positions that are hardest to fill and that are have the greatest impact on on student outcomes.

I think that's where I think we need to focus because the costs in the K-12 system are enormous.

It's half the state budget is the K-12 system.

So so any increases there have a lot of zeros behind them.

And so that's why I think we really need to to focus.

Last question for you.

We went through the process with the long term health care fund.

It's always a nice idea to set up a fund earmarked for it to take some money and everything should work great.

Well, it didn't so much, but now we're talking about another fund, possibly the watcher Washington Futures Fund, that does something like, you know, four grand or so for the roughly half.

I was surprised to learn 40,000 kids every year who qualify under Apple Care, which is the state's Medicaid program for kids doing another fund.

What what is the thinking behind that?

Is is that going to fly based on our experience with the long term care fund?

What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting idea.

Came out of our our state treasurer.

I think there's a couple of questions that we're trying to work through before we commit on that.

I think one is if if the bonds are available to somebody who was born under Apple health, what about somebody whose family falls into poverty after they're born?

What about somebody who's born into poverty?

But then their family becomes very wealthy.

Right.

There's some fairness issues that I don't think we've fully resolved yet on that.

Certainly there's a large cost there as well.

And I think that those are some of the questions that we'll need to answer before we commit on that.

Say, with Washington cares that the long term care insurance.

I do think that in the long run that's likely to be something that can save the state money as we can have have fewer folks relying on Medicaid to pay for their long term care services.

Washington State now has a $156 billion biannual budget with all the arrows for both projected spending and projected revenues going up, which seems fine for now.

The bottom line there are serious questions to ask about sustainability, and that's where the choices become increasingly stark when lawmakers make decisions about spending, taxation and the ultimate size of the state's role in all of our lives.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at cutesy dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now a streamable podcast of this program is available under the Northwest Now tab at KBTC dot org and on Apple Podcasts by searching Northwest now.

That is going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now until next time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.