Initiative promoter Tim Eyman.

OLYMPIA, July 23.—It’s a pretty funny thing about the five tax advisory votes coming this November to the Washington state ballot. You can pretty well predict which way they’re going to go – can you possibly imagine the voters saying yes? Then, when the voters have spoken, you can be pretty sure the Legislature will ignore them.

And the whole process is going to cost the state a pretty penny– roughly $240,000 this year, say state elections officials.

But it’s sort of like those credit-card ads of a few years ago – some things are priceless, says Tim Eyman, the state’s leading initiative promoter and the father of the idea. Like watching the Legislature squirm. It’s not his fault the Legislature decided to raise taxes this year, he says. “I wish they hadn’t passed any taxes. Then there wouldn’t be any votes.”

Welcome to Washington’s quirky new elections tradition, one that could have more of an impact than many realize, unless and until lawmakers find an excuse to scuttle it. Established by a little-noticed provision of an all-but forgotten initiative, the advisory-vote process is in its second year. Last election there were two votes, both negative, and they appeared to make no impression whatever on the Legislature. But after a session when lawmakers eased off the brakes with regard to taxes, we begin to see what those advisory votes really mean. Last week the state attorney general’s office confirmed that advisory votes will take place on five tax bills passed by lawmakers this year. It’s going to take a big, thick voter’s pamphlet to explain them all. Printing costs are up. And with 20 extra pages state elections officials are worried that this year’s edition will be more like a phone book. Critics are calling it the priciest telegram ever sent to the Washington Legislature, and the biggest waste of tax dollars they’ve ever seen.

Yet there is something puckish about the idea. Henceforward, Washington voters can be counted on to say no every election. Then lawmakers can be counted on to ignore them. Odds are the process will show mainly that voters are rather less enthusiastic about taxes than many in the state capital would like to believe. In a year like this one it is an irritation. But can you imagine what the ballot will look like in a more ordinary year, when all restraints are off, lawmakers pass dozens of tax bills and the state voters’ pamphlet takes on the heft of Webster’s Unabridged? It’s why Tim Eyman is smiling.

 Five Votes This Year

The votes are the result of Initiative 960, a 2007 initiative put forward by Eyman, who has made a career of populist anti-tax measures over the last 15 years. His initiative was one of the long series of ballot measures approved by Washington voters during the last two decades that have required a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate for any legislative tax increase. Those measures packed quite a wallop – while they were in force they effectively blocked any discussion of big tax increases in the Legislature, because it seemed obvious Republicans would say no and a two-thirds vote could never be obtained. Even the most ardent tax advocates didn’t bother. But finally this year the state Supreme Court threw out the idea on constitutional grounds, and it was back to the old way of doing business. All it takes now to pass a tax in the Legislature is a simple majority vote.

Just one thing – that 2007 initiative technically remains on the books. Even if the two-thirds rule is unenforceable, the rest of it still carries the force of law. And you have to remember that I-960 did everything short of triggering an air-raid siren every time the Legislature starts talking taxes. Whenever anyone files a tax bill, there has to be a public warning. You can sign up for emails on a state website. Every proposed tax increase must be accompanied with a 10-year revenue projection. And if the Legislature ever manages to pass a tax increase on its own, the initiative requires a public advisory vote, just to let lawmakers know what the public thinks of the idea. The state voters’ pamphlet not only has to carry a full explanation of the tax, it also has to provide a full listing of how each member voted.

Last year was the first time the rule kicked in. That was because lawmakers temporarily suspended the initiative in 2010, just before they passed a multi-billion-dollar tax increase. The state’s voters responded by passing the two-thirds rule twice more. The old, more expansive initiative quietly took force again last year, overshadowed by the two more recent initiatives. And lawmakers neglected to repeal the old measure at a time when it might have been justified as a simple cleanup of superfluous language. So two relatively innocuous tax measures approved by the Legislature last year went to the ballot, one boosting taxes on banks and the other boosting taxes on underground storage tanks. Washington voters said no 57-43 and 55-45.

Now that the Supreme Court has tossed out the two-thirds rule, those advisory votes are the most significant remnant of that multi-year revolt, and odds are any repeal attempt will be a bit harder — it takes on a rather different political significance. This year’s slate of votes is somewhat longer and more important. It includes two major bills that were debated by the Legislature all session long. One measure restores a portion of the Washington estate tax that had been thrown out by the Supreme Court on technical grounds, and it makes a controversial retroactive fix to the law, meaning that the state doesn’t have to give any money back – that was worth $160 million this session. Another establishes equivalent taxation for most forms of telephone communication, eliminating an archaic tax break for users of old-style landline phones – that one generates $85 million.

But then there are three bills that are more typical of the Legislature’s work, making dense and largely technical adjustments to the taxation of commuter airplanes, pediatric dental services, and rentals of public lands. In each case, some classes of taxpayers will see an increase. So voters will have their say, and then, presumably, legislators will ignore them once more.

Called Waste of Taxpayer Funds

It’s one of the silliest ideas Eyman has come up with, complains Andrew Villenueve, who has made a career of opposing everything Eyman proposes. “Why would you spend money on votes that don’t mean anything?” asks the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute. “They are basically very expensive public-opinion research polls.”

It’s why Washington has a Legislature in the first place, he says – to make decisions like those. It’s not as if an advisory vote can change something that has already happened. “I don’t know what the outcome will be, but I think they are a waste of money,” he says. “It doesn’t benefit the taxpayers in any way. So I find it ironic that someone who is against wasting government money would be for something that wasteful.”

Costs so Little and it Means So Much

Because the advisory votes carry no weight whatever, it is hard to imagine any interest group bothering to finance a campaign for or against them. And so the only information most voters will have is the technical description that appears in the voters’ pamphlet and the question that appears on the ballot – do voters support a particular tax increase, yes or no? For his own reasons, Eyman maintains there is a smidgeon of doubt. “I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that voters will say no,” he says. “Maybe some voters will decide some of these tax increases are okay, and that’s fine by us. And if they say yes, I imagine the Legislature will be shouting it from the rooftops.”

Yet even Eyman acknowledges he doesn’t expect to see many yes votes. And over time, he says he thinks the tradition of advisory votes, and the likely tradition of legislative indifference, may spur a bit of that voter frustration that is so useful in tax revolts. So maybe it doesn’t have the direct effect of the old two-thirds-for taxes rule — it’s something, right? In some swing districts, where elections are decided by a handful of votes, he says the public information about legislators’ voting records may have an impact. And a long string of public no-votes might have a chilling effect on the Legislature when it comes to tax increases, or even routine adjustments to the tax code – a consummation he says is greatly to be wished. “It provides an incentive for legislators to say, how are my constituents going to feel about this tax?”

You get all that for just a few thousand bucks every election – “chump change,” he calls it. He notes that the 10-year projection for the five tax bills comes to $877,662,150. “Let’s see, they’re raising our taxes $1 billion, and they’re complaining about $250,000?”

Thus is born a new elections tradition that will last as long as it takes for irritated lawmakers to repeal it, or stop printing the voters’ pamphlet, or move it online where few voters will see it, or bulk up the ballot and the elections guide with any number of other issues. Equally puckish lawmakers might require advisory votes on tax-exemption bills, for example. For now, after the Supreme Court’s decision this year on the two-thirds rule, the advisory votes are a consolation prize for Eyman. He says, “I’d rather speak and be ignored than never speak at all.”

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