Olympia Conference Call

Yesterday afternoon Stephan Sharkansky from Sound Politics, Phil from Random Nuclear Strikes, and I joined in a conference call with several folks from the Washington State legislature to discuss the Republican proposal for a property tax rebate, since the state currently has 3.5 billion dollars sitting in bank accounts that's not otherwise committed to being spent (yet!). The Republicans are saying that we taxed you too much, so we want to give some of it back! What a concept!

The plan is to put half of it into a "Rainy Day" fund, and then refund the rest to the taxpayers. What a refreshing approach. Will the D's let this happen? We'll see.

Why do I have this feeling of dread that somehow the refunds will also be going to folks that didn't pay any taxes to start with, just so everyone gets some?

Along the same lines, we also discussed reinstating the 1% property tax increase limitation, and establishing some controls on the out of control property tax assessments.

We wrapped it up with a discussion about the felons on parole who are failing drug tests, failing to report in to their probation officers, and violating probation in other ways, but aren't getting arrested and put back into jail for violating the conditions of their probation. We have recently had three LEO's killed by felons on parole who were violating the conditions of their parole suficiently that they should have been put back into jail but weren't. The head of corrections for the state, a Gregoire appointee, still has not responded to questions about this problem posed by the Republicans way back in December.

For a more complete report on the conference call, you will want to go read Phil's post here.

Don't forget the hearing tomorrow in Olympia on the proposed law regarding private firearms sales at gun shows being required to be done through a FFL.