Taxes could be going up again in The Evergreen State.

This week on Inside Olympia, the debate over how to bridge a multi-billion dollar gap in the state budget. Majority Democrats have laid out their plans to fund state programs and services for the next two years. Will it be new taxes, spending cuts, or both? We get perspectives from two members of the Budget Writing Committee in the House. Plus, we talk with Capitol Press reporter Don Jenkins, who covers the ag beat in Washington state. From the TVW studio, it's Inside Olympia with host Austin Jenkins. And welcome to Inside Olympia. As newspapers shrink, there is less coverage focused on rural Washington and on agricultural issues. In our second half, we'll talk with one of the few reporters left covering these issues full time in Washington state. But first, Majority Democrats in the House and the Senate have unveiled their budget proposals for the next two years, including plans to raise taxes and fees to close a multi-billion dollar shortfall, while still growing the budget. Joining me now to discuss and debate these proposals are two state lawmakers, House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, who is the number two Democrat in the House, and State Representative Travis Couture, who is the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations or Budget Committee. Welcome, both of you to Inside Olympia. Nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Before we begin talking about budget and taxes, I want to give you both a chance to reflect briefly on the passing last week of former Speaker of the House Frank Chopp. Joe Fitzgibbon, I know you worked with him for many, many years. Just a couple of thoughts about his sudden, surprising, and tragic passing. Yeah, we were all surprised and saddened to get the news of Frank's passing. I don't think anybody that served with him, when he was Speaker or even after his Speakership was over, didn't learn something about the job and about how to be effective at the job. I don't know that there's anybody who's served in the legislature in recent memory who's had the kind of impact that Frank had for a lot of reasons. I think one was his seemingly endless work ethic. Whether it was session or interim, night or day, week or weekend, Frank was working. He also cared very little about getting credit for the things that he did. He was the master of helping other people receive credit for things that they had helped with, but that he had also had a big role in. It really didn't matter to him at all to get that kind of appreciation. He was so single-mindedly focused on the impacts of what we did on Washingtonians. How could we benefit Washingtonians, particularly the most vulnerable Washingtonians? I think we all, reflecting back on his career, think, what can we do to achieve the kinds of magnitude that Frank achieved? I think it involves not caring about who gets credit for those achievements. I think it involves that work ethic and then centering what are the outcomes of what we're doing and how can we prioritize that above the political theater of coming to the Capitol every day. Of course, he was the longest-serving Speaker of the House in the state, and he grew and consolidated Democratic power in the House. Yet, he seemed like he drew and earned a lot of respect across the aisle. Yeah, I would say that there's a great amount of respect for Frank Schaap in my caucus. I mean, he's a legend. I was watching him do this job when I was a child, and so to be able to serve with him my first session and his last session before he retired was a treat and a little intimidating at first. But one day I got caught in the elevator with him, and he's a funny guy. He's a great guy. I had a good relationship with him, even though we might have disagreed on a lot of things. And my sincere condolences to his friends and his family and, of course, his very close friends in the Democrat caucus. Our heart goes out to them, and I hope his legacy lives on, and I think it will. I'll just note that the Olympia community in the state are also mourning the loss of former Secretary of State Ralph Munroe, who obviously had a big presence here in TVW for many, many years as well. OK, so moving on to the budget and taxes and how to close this budget gap and get a budget that Democrats, at least in the House and Senate, can agree on and the governor will sign in the next few weeks. Majority Leader Fiskeman, let me start with you in terms of what is sort of motivating and animating the budget proposal and tax proposal that came out over the last several days. What's the kind of message that is embodied in those proposals? that can avoid putting the most vulnerable people in our state in a worse spot. So delays to policies that haven't yet taken effect, including expanded access to child care, including changes to how TANF recipients have some of their other benefits collected by the state. That's the state's temporary assistance for needy families, as we speak, called the Welfare Program. Yes, and the delaying rate increases for nursing homes, for example. None of the things that we're excited about, all the things that have impacts on the people who rely on those services, but which we think are more defensible than making deeper cuts to existing services, as well as revenue. And there's no question that our budget relies on a balance of cuts and revenue. We've been clear ever since last fall that we didn't see a way to avoid making really cuts that we would regret in a no new revenue budget. So we've proposed revenue options that we think are able to fill that gap without harming Washington's economic competitiveness. And that while we appreciate that and we appreciate all the jobs and contributions they make to our state, can also help us avoid really devastating cuts to the state and also help us invest more in our K-12 public schools. Okay, Representative Couture, you're the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee. You've been watching the, hearing the testimony, sort of watching the process, but not on the inside as this budget, Democratic budget, was developed. As you look at this proposal, at the Senate Democrats' proposal, what is your takeaway? Yeah, you know, I think in order to understand how we got here, well, to understand where we're at, we have to understand how we got here. There's a set of decisions that have been made over the last handful of years that have kind of put us in this position. And I will acknowledge that, you know, there's some tough decisions that had to be made and some of those I agree with. But I think this budget falls short, not just of balancing the budget, which is just one angle to look at it. In a lot of ways, we do harm regular, everyday Washingtonians. There is a, you know, a large property tax as a portion of this budget. And we've been told that in order to help out the people that need us the most, which I agree with, that we need to have more progressive revenue on the wealthy. But, you know, I pay property taxes and I'm not wealthy. And so I just think that there's a lot of parts of this budget that are taxing the working class and harming the middle class and people who need us the most. And at a time when you look at the four-year outlook and you see the end fund balance of a total reserve of a little over $6 billion, you wonder why we had to rob single mothers on TANF of child support and why we had to get rid of ABD recoveries just so that we could pad the bottom line of the state of Washington. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I understand that budgets can be difficult, but I think we have to do a better job of having priorities of government and having some kind of structural budget reform so that we save the taxpayer from, you know, the absolute burdens that they feel in this state. We're a state where we're one of the most unaffordable in the country for gas, groceries, housing, rent, energy, insurance, price hikes, and so many other different things. And there's parts of this bill that will increase the cost of health care up to $1,400 a year for private payers. That is a cost that many in my district and many across the state of Washington just cannot bear. We have to do a better job of eliminating more waste in our budget and finding clever solutions to make government more efficient. Representative Fitzgibbon, what is the justification for, especially given the budget gap, the gap between projected revenues coming in and projected spending going forward, what is the justification for not only closing that gap but actually spending more in the next biennium as opposed to holding level? Yeah, so the biennium in which we have the most significant budget problem is the upcoming biennium, the budget biennium 25-27. And then we're required constitutionally to evaluate, or under the Budget Act, we're required to evaluate the potential revenue and spending in the outlook biennium. That isn't predictable with very much precision. And the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council acknowledges that, that the longer out you are into the future, the greater the uncertainty is. I know I'm concerned that if we're in a trade war with Canada and China and Mexico and Europe, you know, that those longer-term growth prospects are in greater jeopardy than if we're not. So I think having a healthy end fund balance as well as not tapping into the budget stabilization account, which the House proposal does not do, gives us a hedge against uncertainty. Uncertainty coming from Congress, uncertainty coming from geopolitics, and that is useful. That said, you know, a lot of the reserves that we're looking at in the House budget are for things like stabilizing our pension funding and really saving money for Washington taxpayers in the long run. And I'm sure that as we work through our budget process with our Senate colleagues, neither – the budget is not going to look like it – either chamber's proposal does today. But – and that's an argument for kind of why you have a – what you would, I guess, describe as a healthy ending fund balance in this budget. But why, if there is a budget crisis, how can you justify spending more rather than just balancing the budget? In the 25-27 biennium? Yeah. Because – yeah, sure. Because that – the 25-27 budget is more than the current 23-25. Yeah, and I can say that the cost of providing state services, starting with the most important service that we provide as a state, K-12 education, has increased. Inflation also impacts the cost to the state to provide health care for both people on Medicaid, people on CascadeCare, and public employees in the PEB and SEB systems. Unfortunately, the inflation that all Washingtonians have noticed impacting their household budgets and all Washington employers have noticed making it harder to recruit and retain qualified staff has also impacted state government. And we have to address that if we're going to keep providing services like nursing homes and health care and K-12 education. What is this budget buying that you wouldn't buy if you were writing it? You know, one of the ways I look at it is I ask myself, who wins in this budget? Who's going to win in this session? And it seems like it's higher pay increases for bureaucrats and politicians and people who have committed crimes. And I just, I have a problem with that because, you know, inflationary spending, I mean, yeah, there's always going to be an extra, you know, tack on for inflation. In the last revenue forecast, it was like a half a billion dollars more. But yet this budget spends 8% more than the previous one, from $72 to almost nearly $78 billion in the general fund for the state. And the problem with that is we didn't have to spend that money. That's billions of dollars, not $500 million. We've continued to do the same things that have put us in this place in the first place, which is, you know, passing policies and then putting these things kind of on layaway to pay for at another date, like Fair Start for Kids, for example. But instead of doing something about it, we delay it again, and we delay entitlements again, and we delay so many other different things down the road in the future. And without some of these structural budget reforms, we'll just continue to recklessly spend out of control. This is the fourth straight budget where we've spent more than we take in, more than we're projected to take in. And it wasn't just me who was saying that we shouldn't, in the second biennium, where things are a little bit more uncertain, that we shouldn't be assuming the 4.5% revenue assumption anymore. Governor Ferguson has said that as well. He said it before session, and he said it multiple times thereafter. It's that kind of like a balance sheet manipulation that allows for new programs or expansion of programs with money you never had. And when you don't have money for those things, then we just kick the can down the road. We'll be having this conversation once again because we didn't actually reform how we do our budgeting process. We just continued the same tactics that got us in this place right now. And with an 8% increase in spending, I don't really know exactly what we're buying. We didn't do anything really for MSOC. And that's the materials, supplies, and operating costs for schools, public schools. Right. And so there was some cuts and the necessary cuts that were needed. But at the end of the day, a lot of the spending is vendor rate increases and pay for bureaucrats and more pay for us, for politicians and everything else. That hurts the REIT. It hurts our document recording fee that we had to backfill with over $100 million. I mean, there's a lot of problems with this budget. And sometimes I just think of what was the strategy, what was the vision here, and I just don't really know other than paying people more. Well, so I asked you for the justification on the spending more. There's also a huge amount of new billions more in new revenues, in fact, more in revenues than in cuts. And several new taxes are on the table. Senate Democrats have sort of a different list than House Democrats. But on the revenue side, what is the justification there, Representative Fitzgibbon, as why look to so much new revenue? Why look to new sources, which can sometimes be unreliable or unpredictable or maybe even get challenged in court? What was the thinking? Yeah, so we know that Washington has among the nation's most regressive tax structures. We moved from 50th to 49th after the capital gains tax was passed. So we're still relying on a tax code that falls the most heavily on the poor and middle income Washingtonians relative to the wealthiest. That's why you saw a lot of enthusiasm from House and Senate Democrats in looking at some new tools, including tax on intangible assets over $50 million, as well as a B&O tax surcharge on large businesses' revenue over $250 million. We need to have K-12 schools. We need to have colleges and universities. We need to have a strong social safety net because everybody, rich or poor, has somebody in their life who's been impacted by behavioral health, by perhaps substance use addiction, and having those safety nets in place benefit all of us. I know Democrats feel perhaps some wind at their backs because the capital gains tax was upheld by voters last fall by large margins. I know I've had Democrats sitting at this table in recent months saying it's an indication we're doing the right thing and that voters want us to be looking at trying to rebalance the tax code. When you hear Majority Leader Fitzgibbon talk about that's what's motivating this and that's why they're going down this road, how do you respond? Why do you think this is not the right approach? Well, I mean, once again, I mean, we made a lot of cuts but then raised a lot more revenue, right, as proposed in this budget. And if the idea is to go after people who are successful or innovators who are wealthy in society or big, large employers in our communities, I mean, just look, Amazon moved from Seattle to Bellevue just at the threat of a jumpstart tax. And so there's downstream effects to a lot of these things that, you know, I'd like to think of some of these taxes as job killers. I mean, a lot of the jobs, especially in the Seattle area, they're six-figure median income jobs. And so that doesn't help anybody. And so they won't let go the upper echelons of the corporation. They're going to let people at the bottom go. They're going to bump them out. And I'm worried about capital flight, which we've seen before. The voters did accept the current capital gains tax, but that was on transactions of things you've already purchased. This is an unrealized capital gains tax on things that you don't even have a – you haven't even made a profit on yet. And so the implementation, Department of Revenue, even Nick Hanauer, who was a big champion of the capital gains tax, thought it was a boneheaded move. Department of Revenue said it's almost undoable, probably unconstitutional. And I understand that some people in our state want something like that. But once again, in order to – the near-term outlook of our budget, in order to get it to balance, a super harmful property tax where your school levy lid lifts could be double what they are right now, an increase with inflation plus population up to 3 percent, I mean, these are things that are devastating to working families. Those aren't rich people. And you've been referred to property taxes a few times. You're referring to the repeal of the 1 percent cap. Is that right? Yeah. What the bill does is it allows it to go up to 3 percent and also some things about school levies. And this is at the discretion of the local governments? Yeah. I mean, it can be at the discretion of local governments or schools, right, because the levies can double. But – and the B&O tax itself is a 50 percent increase of what our largest employers pay now. And I'm afraid that they will pack their bags and move to other states and take the jobs that they have with them. So let me allow you to address these criticisms, you know, that the property tax cap being lifted will hurt working families, middle class families, that the taxes aimed at wealthier Washingtonians will drive businesses and jobs elsewhere. I've heard it be – you described it as a job killer. I know critics, other critics have sat here and said it was an innovation killer. How do you respond to these criticisms? Yeah. You know, I don't think any tax is beloved by anybody who has to pay it. There's no question that it's a lot easier to write a budget when we don't have to ask anybody to pay more. You know, my first two years in my role as majority leader, you know, we didn't raise any taxes. And I can tell you it was a lot easier to get the budget passed those years than it's going to be this year. We do – we are blessed in Washington to have some of the world's most successful businesses headquartered here with enormous profit margins, enormous gross receipts, and that continue to do very well in the tech economy, in the biotech economy, and in the financial services industry. So we do think that while – that we need to be very careful about any tax that we pass, that it isn't sparking the kind of capital flight that Rep Couture talked about. You know, that's one of the filters that we are going to run through as we look to figure out what is the right combination. We have now ideas from the House, ideas from the Senate. You know, there may be more ideas that come forward before the end of the session. What's the right combination of those things where everybody is chipping in, but nobody is being – you know, seeing an increase that is so big that they – that that changes their decisions about where to grow their business. You know, as far as the property tax, having a 1% cap on property tax means that the property taxes go down year over year relative to inflation. And that has been enormously harmful to local government budgets, especially counties, because counties rely so heavily on the property tax to pay for things like sheriffs and courts and prosecutors. It's less impactful to cities because they have a few more revenue tools, and it's a lot less impactful to the state because we have a lot more revenue tools. But capping property tax at 1% when inflation is way above 1% is functionally a decrease in revenue year over year. And that's one of the reasons why we've seen so many local governments not be able to afford the number of law enforcement officers that we hear from people they would like to see protecting their communities. Just to be clear, I don't want to have misspoken. If the caps roll back, how does this work? Does everybody then have the flexibility? Is it county by county? Local governments, cities, counties would have to make – would be making a local decision over whether or not to go to that new cap. In the House proposal, it's 3%. In the Senate proposal, it's inflation plus population growth. So, you know, a difference there. But if the House proposal were adopted, then Thurston County could adopt a property tax increase of up to 3% rather than 1%, which is what they're allowed to do today. You wanted to jump in? Just once again, I mean, I know that sometimes local governments can be kind of hamstrung by that. But this is an important protection for taxpayers that taxpayers wanted, you know, passed by initiative. And it's in our state constitution as well. And this is a different 1% to 3%. But the idea that inflation hits our counties and our cities, yes, that's true. But it hits our family budgets as well. And I mean, just in my district alone, I have a lot of retirees and people on fixed incomes, senior citizens, and even people on low incomes who are on fixed incomes. And I just don't understand, you know, how we're trying to balance our budget on the backs of those folks. And this is very harmful, especially when you couple it with things like rent control. It could be devastating to housing supply. It's going to crush homeowners. And at the end of the day, those are two policies that don't live in a vacuum. They would work together in this budget. And on top of that, you've got a host of other smaller taxes and fees. I like to say that they're taxing the joy out of Washingtonians. You're going to have more fees for your Discover Pass to go on vacation. You're going to have more fees for liquor, for zin, for ammunition, for so many other different things. We've increased the fees and taxes for that are not the top three big tax increases. And then maybe, you know, if you work at one of these bigger corporations, you might not have a job anymore. And so it could be absolutely devastating. And I think that as much as we think about government and how government should be healthy when there's times of higher inflation, we need to start by thinking about our family budgets of our constituents at home. I want to ask a sort of bigger picture question, which is it seems to me as though perhaps now the legislature is on something of a collision course with the governor because he didn't seem terribly enthralled with the wealth tax idea. And he also has said all along he wants $100 million to hire more law enforcement. And between these two budgets, I think the Senate did $25 million. And did you guys put any money in? Other way around. You put $25 in. $25 in the biennium and then some other things. So you need to get a signature on whatever passes, both on the budget and the revenue side. I'm asking you, I guess, are you on a collision course? What's the thinking here? Because these are two things he seems to signal pretty clearly. We're in regular conversation with the governor. I talked to him this morning. He's looking at both budgets and evaluating both the House and Senate Democratic budgets to see. I'm sure there's going to be things that he likes in both and some things that he doesn't like in both. The approach that we took on the public safety funding was rather than just $100 million just for bonuses to hiring law enforcement, we took a three-legged approach. Dollars for the signing bonuses that Governor Ferguson and legislative Republicans have proposed, money for prevention and for investment in programs that keep people from engaging in crime in the first place for the community reinvestment program, as well as the authority for local governments to raise local sustainable revenue, because it's not sustainable to just hire law enforcement if you, back to our previous conversation, don't have the revenue tools to keep those folks on payroll. And so by allowing a tenth of a percent sales tax for criminal justice purposes to be enacted more easily, that really ensures sustainable funding for law enforcement going forward. So that's not exactly what Governor Ferguson proposed. That's what we proposed. We're in conversations with him to see, you know, does this meet your needs? And if not, how do we get to something that does meet your needs? And similarly on revenue, I'm not going to speak for the governor or what he's going to do or what he's going to prioritize on revenue. You know, he has been very publicly skeptical of the intangible property tax, and that's absolutely something that we will have in mind as we get to the end of session. But our goal is to be clear on what his bottom lines are, make sure that he understands our bottom lines, so that we can all align in a budget that gets us done with our work on time on April 27th. My understanding is you'll pass the budgets, but then in terms of our revenue package, House and Senate plans to come together and sort of figure that out and then move forward rather than you each pass your own. Yeah, that's right. I think we're planning on, you know, aligning on what the final revenue package ought to be before we start voting it out. $100 million for police. Yeah, of course, this is something Governor Ferguson campaigned on. He promised it at his maiden speech at the beginning of session. It's something that our caucus and the Republican caucus, probably both sides, House and Senate, want. And we want to fund more police because we're 51 out of 50 in the nation per capita for police. And that's unacceptable. I didn't really like the bill. It wasn't the Republican proposal that inevitably came forward into the budget. It was a proposal that ensures that you have to increase your own sales tax locally in order to deserve the right to have public safety in your communities. And we voted no on that because of that. And I even tried on the House floor to, at least in that bill, make sure that we fully funded at the $100 million level. That was denied. Now it's at, like Brett Fitzgibbon said, it's at the $25 million level in the first couple of years. I just don't think that's enough. Even if you spent every dollar efficiently at the $100 million, it would maybe move you from 51 to 50. And so $25 million doesn't cut it. And it's tied to a lot of other different things. Most cities and localities won't be able to even hire one police officer based upon this bill, including the sales taxes that they might implement if they haven't already. And so I think we need to do better. We are under three minutes. I do want to ask you briefly. You have put out some budget reform proposals. Clearly there is Republican heartburn about the spending here. You're calling for accountability performance audits, also zero-based budgeting. What is it that you think could or should be done differently here as budgets are scrubbed? I mentioned it a little bit at the beginning that unless we have some structural budget reforms in our process, then we'll be back here once again. And I think that we need to have some limits for taxes and for spending because we're not in a crisis. We're not in an economic downturn. We're not in a recession. This budget deficit that we face right now is a problem that has been solely created based upon decisions made here in Olympia. And it was totally avoidable. People warned about it. Our caucus warned about it as far back as 2021, which is really when the train kind of came off the rails as far as our state budget. And, again, for the fourth session in a row, we have created a budget that spends more than it takes in. And we've got to be able to rein some of that in and have some. Washingtonians work hard, and they want the budget to be able to work hard for them as well. We have to have real results. We do often look at spending in Olympia, and it's harder to follow the bouncing ball to see what's actually built with that. Why not approach this more as a zero-based budget, especially given the crisis? Democrats historically in the past have done that. I guess I don't know that that's that different than what we do today. We look very carefully at all spending reduction options. We started back in December looking at all technically feasible spending reduction options, many of which, once you look at them and say, okay, that's technically feasible, but that's not morally okay, or that's not something that a majority of the legislature would vote for. But we are pretty careful in going over both maintenance-level spending and even more carefully scrutinize any proposal for increased spending. That's why we passed very few bills out of the House this year that cost money, and that continues to be our careful approach as we look to spending taxpayers' dollars wisely. Okay. Do you think you can get agreements and get out on time? Yes. What are Republicans going to be doing for the next four weeks if you don't have the votes? Well, I mean, tonight we're having budget amendments in committee, and on Monday we'll have amendments on the floor. And we're going to try to put forward what we think we can do to adjust the Democrat proposal to better affect the citizens of Washington. Okay. State Representative Travis Couture, who is the ranking Republican in the House Appropriations Committee. Thank you for coming in. Appreciate it. Thank you. House Majority Leader Joe Biscuit, thank you as well for coming in. Appreciate the conversation. And when we come back, covering policy issues that affect rural Washington and the agricultural industry, we sit down with Don Jenkins, no relation, of the Capitol Press, back after this. There's been losses every year since the early 1920s. The shoreline itself was almost two miles further out there. Year after year, more homes would fall in the water. We have nothing to lose. And welcome back to Inside Olympia. Every session, we check in with journalists who cover state government to get their perspective on how things are going. Don Jenkins is a longtime reporter here in the Northwest with bylines in the News Review, the Daily News, the Columbian. And he's currently a reporter for Capitol Press, which covers agricultural issues. He's been writing there for the last decade. He's now our guest. Welcome, Don Jenkins. Thank you. I should note, we have worked together over the years. We shared office space. We are not brothers. That's right. But we do share a lot. That's right. It gets confusing with the Speaker of the House, whose last name is Jenkins. That's right. And I often feel like I have to also say I'm not related to her. I spell my name with an E. But we are kind of like brothers. That's right. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. One of the reasons we wanted to talk with you is because we had the University of Washington Professor Matthew Powers on this program recently talking about the declining statehouse press corps. But he was saying one thing they noticed in their research is that rural Washington, rural parts of the state were being underserved by statehouse coverage because reporters tend to gravitate towards issues that are more affecting urban areas. You're writing about ag issues. You're writing about issues that affect more rural parts of the state. I'm interested in your kind of perspective on that, serving audiences, especially in rural parts of the state. Well, it can be strange because I live in western Washington, and yet sometimes I feel like I'm representing, not representing, but reporting mostly for eastern Washington, even though I've never lived in eastern Washington. But a lot of our leaders are in eastern Washington. And I think it's always been kind of that way. If you recall, if you go back 20 years ago, there was only one reporter who always asked about water, and that was the Tri-City Herald reporter. And the rest of us would roll our eyes about water because it's like water's everywhere. It feels like it's plentiful over here, right? And then you learn covering agriculture, the three most important things in farming is water, water, water. So, yeah, it's true, and it's probably been true for a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about the Capital Press, what it is, who its audience is, its history? Well, we cover agriculture in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and a bit in northern California, although that may be an exaggeration because we've shrunk, too, like other newspapers. It's been around since the 1920s, so it's not new. It was family-owned until November 1st, and then Carpenter Media Group bought it. And Carpenter Media Group is owned by a man named Todd Carpenter, and he has bought a lot of newspapers in the last year, including newspapers, the Capital Press, and other newspapers in the eastern Oregon media group. So the paper is based in Salem, and we have reporters based in Washington, Idaho, and in Oregon. And amazingly, somehow it all works. How much is your audience these days picking up a physical paper versus reading online or on their phone? I don't know the numbers, but our paper subscribers, I'm sure, outnumber our digital subscribers, even though the desire is to go, everybody wants to go digital. Well, our print, we're kind of lucky with the print because people love the tractor ads. And so if you want to look at tractor ads, the Capital Press is the paper for you. And we just try to give them a little something to read on the way to the tractor ads or after the tractor ads. Tell me about your beat, how you're choosing your stories. We're going to talk about some of your recent coverage of Olympia-related topics, but how do you decide what to cover? Well, I found out, I was not a new reporter by any means when I started the Capital Press, but I found agriculture the most difficult beat or subject to really get a handle on. And I don't have a handle on it after 10 years because it's so diverse. So I'm not sure I am writing the stories that people want to read that much. I hope I am, but it's just so diverse. There's water issues, there's labor issues, there's trade issues, there's pesticide issues, there's all sorts of court cases going on, all sorts of regulations going on. And so it's such a big topic. I might write a story about cranberry growers on the Long Beach Peninsula and then cattle ranchers in Stevens County in Northeast Washington. Well, what do they have in common? Well, they're both in agriculture. Does the rancher know about cranberries? Does the cranberry farmer know about ranching? Right. So it's just a very, very diverse field. And I don't know if anybody can really be an expert in all of agriculture. We are often described as the most trade-dependent state in the country. You've covered this legislature for The Columbian, for instance, for other publications. Now that you are looking at Olympia and the legislature through the lens of your readership, what pops out at you in terms of the volume of bills related to ag issues, the number of committee hearings that deal in this space? And you gave us sort of the breadth of it. You might not have been looking for it when you were working for a city paper. Now that you work for the capital press, is it like, oh, my gosh, there was this whole vast swath of stuff that I wasn't even paying attention to back then. And now it's all fair game. Yeah, I think that's really true. There are a lot of bills that have to do with agriculture. Most of them, in my judgment, are pretty minor. But there are a few really major bills that are important to farmers and ranchers. And those bills don't get a lot of attention. That's really true. So let's talk a little bit about some of your recent reporting. One of the big issues, ongoing issues, has been around the Climate Commitment Act and trying to exempt farmers and people in ag from paying, essentially, cap and trade taxes on fuel. My understanding is that Governor Inslee, when he was still in office, essentially was saying, we've got this handled, but it seems like the issue is not entirely handled and is the subject of legislation. Bring us up to speed. There's been some competing legislation this year. It sounds like Republicans almost dueling it out on what the best solution is, the Farm Bureau not being happy. It sounds intriguing. Well, so cap and trade taxes fossil fuels. So it's going to increase the price of gasoline and diesel and other types of fossil fuels. And when they were writing the Climate Commitment Act, they were trying to exempt certain sectors. They did. And one of them was agriculture. And so it said, if you use your fuel on a farm to produce a farm product or to transport a farm product, cap and trade does not apply to that fuel. Well, that's very hard. Easier said than done. Yes. And I looked at that, and I was kind of kicking myself now because when that passed, I said, I don't think they can do that. And I asked, oh, yeah, this is going to be a problem. Well, it was a big problem. Because what the oil industry says is that if you have a gallon of fuel coming from a refinery, where is it going to end up? And the supply chain is very complicated. And they liken it to trying to trace the destination of every apple. Who's going to eat every apple? So it's been very difficult to apply that exemption. It's been partially solved. Farmers use a lot of fuel, so they have fuel delivered to their farm by distributors. And so the distributors have figured out a way to knock off the cap and trade fee. But that doesn't take care of the whole problem because a farmer may buy fuel at a gas station or some retail station where there isn't that discount. And so that's what the Farm Bureau is after. The Farm Bureau is after kind of a total fix, as they would put it. Whether that will happen or whether that can happen remains to be seen. The legislation that did pass, which is the other bill, the Tom Dent bill, it doesn't fix that particular problem? According to the Farm Bureau, the Farm Bureau does not call it a fix. Why does Representative Dent think it is? Well, what Representative Dent told me was that it's not a perfect solution and a perfect solution doesn't exist. So it's not a complete fix. To be clear, though, because you said that there was already the discount happening by the fuel delivery folks, but people weren't getting it if they were going up to the gas station and filling up for farm purposes. So what would the bill? Well, the bill, as far as I can see, the bill does a couple of things. One is it directs ecology to compile a map of places where you can go to get the discount. So I guess that can be helpful. You can look it up. And the other is there's some incentives there then for retail stations to hook up to a system to be able to provide the discount. Do you think is this an iterative thing that this will keep coming back? Well, what the Farm Bureau, the Farm Bureau is concerned that there'll be political fatigue on this issue. If they don't get it done now, it's not going to. Yeah, or if they, you know, if they pass a bill this year that the Farm Bureau doesn't consider a fix, then you know how this place works. People may go, well, we addressed that last year. And so we're moving on. Just not to belabor this too much, but what is the fix that the Farm Bureau, and I guess it was Representative Walsh that was carrying their bill. That's right. And he, Jim Walsh, proposed an amendment on the floor. And, of course, that got voted down. And what the Farm Bureau's basic approach is that if you're a farmer and you go to a gas station and you have the proper paperwork to present, then you get an on-the-spot discount. Has anybody figured out, I mean, given that most people are paying with their credit card and the price is the price on the pump, how that would work? Well, that would, yes. Now, yes, now that question gets at every solution has all these questions that are complex. So the Farm Bureau's solution to that is that you would have a formula based on the current auction price of carbon allowances. And so whether that's the true tax on that gallon of gas is unknown because it's unknown what the true tax is. Somebody would have to say what it is, decide what it is. But then would you go up to the cashier and say, I want my discount in cash or something? Okay. So, yeah. But they decided it's too complicated to try to do at least for the moment. Well, it would put a burden on other people. I mean, it would put a burden on retailers, I would think. Okay. There's another topic. And this was interesting to me because it did not immediately present as an ag issue, but there is a reason why you wrote about it. And there's a bill that passed the Washington House to allow people working in the cannabis industry to unionize. Why would that implicate the broader agricultural industry and why would there be concern about this allowing cannabis workers unionize? Well, the title of the bill is interesting because it calls the workers for cannabis growers agricultural workers. So, if the bill passes and becomes law, now you have a precedent for giving some agricultural workers collective bargaining rights. And so, the thought is, and I don't know how it wouldn't be just a prelude to another bill that says, these farm workers, we call them agricultural workers in the title of the bill, they have this privilege. Why don't other farm workers have this privilege? There seemed to be some pushback on the idea that cannabis workers would be equated with farm workers. Yes, that was something that represented Mary Dye, who's an Eastern Washington legislator and farmer. And she made some pointed comments on the floor of the House taking exception to the cannabis industry being lumped in with other agriculture. This is going to prompt for me a question going back in time a little bit. Over recent years, this legislature, a majority of Democrats have tried to expand rights to farm workers, heat protections and workplace safety protections over time. How is that being received and how is that playing? How are these policies – and you don't need to go into specific details on each unless you have something top of mind – but generally, how is this being received and working? Well, the biggest issues, the ones you mentioned, is over time. And that was driven by the Supreme Court. It was driven by a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court that on the surface applied to just dairies. But the reasoning of the decision could easily be applied to all farm workers. And that decision came out just before the legislature convened – the decision came out in 2000. And in 2001, the legislature passed a bill to phase in overtime for all agricultural workers. And so last year was the first year where farm workers were required to be paid time and a half after 40 hours in a week. And so it's quite a controversial subject. There's a proposal to raise it to 50 hours. Is that right? Yes, but that's dead. And it never had a chance. There was a bill in the House and an identical bill in the Senate. Neither got a hearing. If it had been a hearing, it would have been a courtesy hearing. It's just not – What's the sense of – has this been a win for the workers themselves? Not that I know of. I've heard more of the other. But I'm sure that advocates for that law can produce – you know, we had a hearing. There's a hearing that would have been workers produced on both sides. Both sides would have produced their workers. Well, to bring us back to the here and now, there are the Trump tariffs. There are also the DOJ cutbacks in federal agencies, including at USDA. How are the policies of the new Trump administration playing out and being received? You acknowledge you live in western Washington. You're trying to cover these ag-related issues, especially during session emanating from the legislature. But to the extent that you're in this ecosystem these days, what's your sense of the level of anxiety around the tariffs, the implications for ag research if there are cutbacks in federal money flowing to the state? We've got WSU, of course. That's right. Well, right now, I think trade is the big issue. Tariffs are the big issue. The U.S. agriculture generally does not like trade disruptions. And I think the basic reason is if there's a product, if there's a farm product grown in the United States and raised, that can't be grown or raised anywhere else in the world, I don't know what it would be. I'd be curious to know if there was any product, farm product that could only be produced in the United States. And so U.S. agriculture, which exports a lot of goods, is in global competition. And so their customers are sensitive to price and they're sensitive to supply. If you're a candy maker and you're relying on U.S. nuts and you have some interruption in those nuts, then you look somewhere else and you may never go back to the U.S. producer. So there's fear that the U.S. will lose out with any sort of trade disruptions, will lose out on price and will lose customers and they won't be able to get them back. So are you hearing, you had a headline, farm groups fret. Is fret a strong enough word? Well, it's a good headline word because it's short. And so fret maybe understates it a little bit. So if you just go, if you know, so you know, like the American Farm Bureau is kind of a good, a good thing. Barometer. Yeah, barometer to look at for general sentiment. And they say these, these getting into tariffs and trade wars, that will hurt U.S. farmers. But it's not, it's not universal because sometimes a farmer or rancher feels like his or her biggest problem is, is there's too much foreign competition coming in and that it really stymies their ability to grow. And that's, I think probably a, probably a big one would be the sheep industry. And also there's some sentiment on that. It's not universal, but also with the cattle industry. What about the avian flu? How, how, I mean, the headlines seem to be getting progressively worse. It's obviously humans have been infected, but it hasn't, it's not human to human transmissions at this point. Millions of poultry have been, chickens have been killed to sort of contain this around the country. What are you hearing? How concerned should we be? And, and, and by the way, the price of a dozen eggs is now $7 plus it seems. That's why I'm concerned. But, you know, the, so the standard response to, if a flock, flock has bird flu, you just kill the whole flock. You just, you just get rid of the flock and then you have a program to compensate the farmer. And that worked okay, probably in 20, 2014, 2015, when there was an outbreak, but it ended. And this outbreak hasn't ended. So after a while, you could go, man, just killing, killing all these chickens. What are we going to do? Just keep killing chickens? And so there is an idea to try to come up with a vaccination. But, but right now, I mean, it's, it's just, I've got to believe if you're in the business, you're just every day living in fear that your flock's going to get it. Just lastly, we have very little, just a minute, but we didn't ask you about wolves. Just suffice it to say that the headline here is things are unsettled still. And it sounds like there's a lot of heartburn, especially in northeast Washington. There is a heartburn. And I think an interesting part of this story is that for about 10 years now, you have just a portion of the state saying wolves are a problem. Stevens and Ferry counties mostly. And then the reaction to that is kind of interesting because the reaction to that over the years has sometimes been kind of indifference or, well, that's too bad. But as, you know, expressed through the legislators and county commissioners, it's a big problem. And now we're hearing Rep Chapman from the peninsula saying maybe we should spread the. That's right. And he's recognized that before, before this year. So and I think there I think there are Western Washington legislators who recognize that. But it's mostly a Department of Fish and Wildlife. Okay. I'm going to stop you there. Don Jenkins from the Capitol Press. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Good to see you. And thank you for watching Inside Olympia. We'll see you again next time.