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The Washington state Legislature will not move forward on a proposal that would have allowed cities and counties to increase property tax rates by 3% without voter approval.
“It’s not going to advance this year,” Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, author of Senate Bill 5770, told the Washington State Standard on Friday.
During a Jan. 18 committee hearing, Pedersen said the bill would have given local governments “something that more closely approximates inflation and population growth, and allows them to keep up with the needs of our growing population.”
However, on Friday, Pederson told The Washington Standard, “We need to do the work and the reality is that given the voter mood and the initiatives we were not ready to fix that policy.”
The move comes after Senate Republicans held an all-hands-on-deck press conference on the proposal Thursday morning. More than 90% of those who testified on the legislation during the Jan. 18 hearing did so against it.
“This is a win for the people of Washington. Senate Bill 5770 could have resulted in the largest property tax increase in our state’s history — without a vote of the people. This bill is overwhelmingly unpopular,” Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, said in a statement Friday. “People can’t afford a 3% annual increase in their property taxes. And renters can’t afford another tax that could push them out on the street. I’d like to think Democrats are starting to listen to people’s very real concerns.”
Braun added, “Some counties have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”
Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, was part of the unanimous Republican opposition to the proposal in the Senate Ways and Means Committee Monday. In a statement Friday, Rivers said the decision to pull the bill is “great news for property owners and renters across our state, but the reality is, this bill never should have been introduced.”
“We should be looking at ways to make living in Washington more affordable, and this bill goes completely in the other direction,” Rivers said. “The prime sponsor did the right thing by dropping the idea for this year, but I suspect it will be back again. We need to stay on guard and uphold the will of the people who set this limit in the first place.”
Likewise, Sen. Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver and Senate Republican budget leader, said taxpayers should be “outraged that the bill got as far as it did.”
“Republicans are working to lower the cost of living, and housing costs are a big part of that. I can’t figure out why so many Democrats from Puget Sound counties got behind this idea,” Wilson said. “They, of all people, should have realized it would make housing even more expensive, both to buy and to rent, at a time when people are already struggling to get by.”
Currently, state law allows counties to increase property taxes by 1% each year or bank the increase for a future year.
