Opinion: Washington’s 2025 legislative session doubled down on a decade of decline

Washington Policy Center analyst Todd Myers argues Gov. Ferguson’s first session continued a decade-long trend of higher taxes and bigger budgets while basic state services still falter.

Todd Myers asks ‘what do we do from here?’

Todd Myers
Washington Policy Center

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Early in the 2025 legislative session, there was a lot of hopeful talk from the new governor about reining in emergency powers, reducing the misuse of emergency clauses and keeping the budget under control after a decade of huge increases. This would have been a welcome change from Governor Inslee who repeatedly abused his power and left the state worse than he found it in many areas.

Ultimately, Governor’s Ferguson’s first session failed in all of those areas. A bill to limit emergency powers supported by the governor was not adopted.

The governor vetoed some meaningless emergency clauses but left others that were designed to undermine the ability of the people of Washington to vote on these issues. According to the legislative code revisor’s office, there were about 48 bills that included emergency clause language in some form. Not all of these were abusive, but some were, and they were left in place.

And the budget increased both taxes and spending significantly. The tax increases are the largest in state history, by a large margin.

Additionally, the claim that these taxes only hit the wealthy is clearly wrong. The budget increases gas taxes, property taxes, fees for state parks and many other costs that will impact virtually everyone.

The notion that these new taxes are needed to pay for the budget is also dubious. The state budget has increased by 51% after inflation and population growth since 2013. It is also important to note that despite that dramatic increase in spending, Washington has failed badly at its most basic functions – educating children, promoting public safety, providing reliable roads and ferries, preserving our environment, etc.

There are some good things that were removed from the budget. For example, we highlighted last year’s wasteful $45 million EV subsidy that ended up subsidizing the wealthy while doing little to reduce CO2 emissions. Although Governor Inslee wanted to increase funding for those subsidies, the program was eliminated from the budget.

Additionally, Gov Ferguson vetoed some bad spending. Including $200,000 to teach low-income families how to ice skate (this is real). Another veto eliminated about $2 million to study offshore wind turbines with some of that money being directed to one of Jay Inslee’s former advisors. We highlighted that waste as well. This is good news.

But Governor Ferguson’s vetoes reduce the budget by a total of about $25 million. That is nothing. It amounts to .03% of the state biennial budget. There are individual line items that could save that much. For example, the budget includes $22,544,000 just for local government climate planning. There is another $10 million to help activist groups and local governments access federal climate grants – spending taxpayer money to get more taxpayer money.

What do we do from here?

Todd Myers is vice president for research at the Washington Policy Center.

Todd Myers asks ‘what do we do from here?’

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