1. "He who laughs last, laughs best." Or so they say. Tell us, Stefan.

And that's the end of the slowdown.

Hey, Bruce, Cato, etal., doesn't King County need an elected election director? Proof is in the pudding.

I am against all these electeds, but count me amoung the converted. I am of the opinion that I want a strong exec with no electeds, but Sims has proved me wrong.

Posted by: swatter on August 20, 2007 02:26 PM

2. I thought you were against emergency leglislation. Is it really that you're only against emergency (or other) leglislation that you disagree with?

(one of many possible references: http://soundpolitics.com/archives/004427.html)

Posted by: Bill Anderson on August 20, 2007 02:31 PM

3. Wouldn't you say that "not" having the proper amount of time to validate an initiative is not an 'emergency'? We just found out, didn't we, that the "emergency" only existed in the minds of the Democrat corrupt, elected machine.

Posted by: swatter on August 20, 2007 02:41 PM

4. Ron Sims' Council liaison D'Sean Quinn testified that the verification of I-25 will be done "tomorrow".

Reminds me of this Star Trek quote:
"Starship captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want." - Scotty

Replace Starship captains with Bloggers and you can see the problem. King Country is giving you need, but you still continue to act like children.

Posted by: Cato on August 20, 2007 02:57 PM

5. They'll have all thos Union folks counting all night on Double time....Clink clink clink goes our tax money.

Kind of reminds me of all the double time the Unions are working trying to get this damn first leg of UnSound transit up and running....

Posted by: GS on August 20, 2007 03:02 PM

6. Actually, "Bill Anderson", if you had a clue, you'd understand the distinction between state legislature "emergencies" (which is often used to protect the legislation from referendum) and this county emergency, which was proposed to expedite the legislation in order to help the elections office save time and money and finish the signature verification process in time for the Council to consider it.

Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on August 20, 2007 03:09 PM

7. Cato - Surely you jest that bloggers are equal to Star Ship Captains. That is absolutely not true as bloggers are equal to Fleet Admirals!!

Posted by: me on August 20, 2007 03:20 PM

8. And for any of you who are undecided about how to vote tuesday and again in November, on the 11 massive new tax hikes these elections are proposing, read how permanent these tax hikes are thanks to our last legislatures slightful hand in bill writing:

A Seattle Times article

Warning: New taxes will be permanent

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2003842627_nobleed19.html

Even our King County Assessor Scott Noble, is shocked at this slight of hand

Posted by: GS on August 20, 2007 03:39 PM

9. Stefan: Perhaps I don't have a clue...but I'll let the readers judge my comment and your response. Personally, I think you define things that benefit your partiality and partisanship. That's not good or bad...it's just what folks who take partisan stand often do. Just calling as I see it.

Regarding the permanent tax hike, it's not as GS states. I listened to Noble on the Commentators today and despite the fact that Carlson tried multiple times to get Noble to agree with him when he said "if my taxes go up $40 today for a 6-year deal, after 6 years the $40 will still be collected". Noble had to say no several times...

What Noble did say is the ceiling rate increases and that increase is included in the taxing authority giving 1% limits to the new total. That is very different than your suggestion that the taxes will be permanent.

And, by the way, Noble also said if the wording includes specifics (like for certain number of fire trucks, or for a certain number of years) then there is no permanency to the ceiling and the temporary is in fact, just that. Again, this is Noble saying it.

Posted by: Bill Anderson on August 20, 2007 04:29 PM

10. Regarding the misleading propaganda of one Bill Anderson, Stefan is precisely right. The County Council needed emergency attention to the proposal for statistical counting, since the exhaustive count being performed had created the emergency by dragging out the time required to count the petitions, thereby denying citizens prompt attention to an Initiative petition. Whereas the State 'emergencies' were purely cynical manipulations to circumvent the State Constitution and deny citizens their right of referendum.

And it remains to be seen whether those County votes will indeed be counted 'tomorrow', or if some circumstances unforseen by all but Sims & Co. won't arise to drag out the process, thereby evading the action the Council should have voted on today regardless of the representations by D'Sean Quinn.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on August 20, 2007 06:18 PM

11. Bill, why would they bother to put any specifics let alone a time frame in any tax hike from this day forward? Without any specifics, they are home free to collect forever.

The law was:

"unless a tax levy said specifically it was permanent, it wasn't"

The Law is now:

"unless a tax levy says it is temporary, its authority is permanent"

Your example stated a 6 year deal, and a six year deal is still a six year deal. That wasn't a point of contention.

They changed the language with intent to make taxing permanent the default, instead of the default being a temporary tax hike, which it was up until now.

Posted by: gs on August 20, 2007 07:24 PM

12. Bill @ 9, "Perhaps I don't have a clue...but I'll let the readers judge my comment and your response."

We did. You lose.

Posted by: jopalm on August 21, 2007 09:57 AM

13. Bill Anderson:
I carefully read the Times article, and while it is not conclusive, you may be, and probably are, correct in your agreement with Scott Nobles' interpretation of SB5498. However, I still wonder how you cannot see the nefariousness of this bill.

Consider: If my property taxes are $100 per year, the 1% limit prohibits the legislature from increasing my taxes my more than 1$ next year, and by more than $1.01 the year after that. Under the old law, if voters passed a $10 two-year temporary levy, when it expires in two years the most my property taxes can increase by is still $2.01. But under the new law, the legal tax increase would be this $2.01 plus 1% of $10 for each year, which is $2.21, and this extra $.2 increase would be included in every tax bill thereafter, just as a 1% pay raise you get today is included in every paycheck you get hereafter. There are multiple levies almost every year, and each will artificially boost the tax base from which the legal property tax increase is calculated, so the cumulative effect over the next ten or twenty years is significant and incalculable. This is a blatant end run around the 1% tax increase limit (i.e. a tyrannical disrespect for the rule of law), and I hope someone with more money than I have will undertake the legal steps to get the bill reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Posted by: srogers on August 21, 2007 10:16 AM

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