Income tax, a pension raid and more: Like addicts, Democrats in Olympia can’t get enough of our money

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, February 24, 2026

If one thing is certain, it’s that when it comes to the government, rarely is spending the problem.

No, they just do not have enough taxes.

In my view, this is almost a universal truth. Even when fraud and abuse is found, it’s not really taken seriously. Just like an addict, they just need one more financial fix.

Nowhere is this more evident than here in Washington.

If taxing your way out of poor spending priorities worked, California would still be the “Golden State.”

They tax everything, and they have an income tax. But they are deep in debt, over-taxed and have little to show for it other than unaffordability.

This session in Olympia, like many before, Democrats floated the idea of an income tax with the promise it will only affect the millionaires — not us regular folks. They pinky promise we’ll never see it unless we are rich.

Then, when Republicans tried to add an amendment to put that fact in law, they refused to. Now if it’s really true that this will never affect anyone but the millionaires, why would they object to including that in the legislation?

Republicans tried, but Democrats said no. Maybe they aren’t being honest about it.

And just to be sure, we can’t overrule them by initiative. They added an emergency clause to prevent it. That’s conveniently democratic.

To be fair, they think they are doing us a favor by piling on taxes and making it difficult if not impossible to do anything about it. Reminds me of a funny saying I read somewhere — the floggings will continue until morale improves.

I guess our morale hasn’t improved yet.

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But I do have to give those persistent Democrats credit for something they have been trying to do for years — grab our pension cash.

The Law Enforcement Officer and Fire Fighter plan 1 (LEOFF 1), if I’m not mistaken, was one of the only fully-funded pensions in the state. And Democrats have tried for years to get at it.

It looks like Democrats finally did it.

Their excuse was that it is necessary to fill a huge hole in their endless spending plan, even after the largest tax increase in state history last session. So they promise to honor our pensions with a pinky promise, just like promising not to raise taxes and make life here more affordable — until they are elected again.

Now that they have seized that pot of money, and probably spent it already, where will they go to get more next time? And we know there will be a next time.

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I read the Timberland Regional Library system is financially strapped and has been spending reserves since 2020. According to the article in The Chronicle, they had $13.2 million in reserves back then, but now they’re in a financial crisis.

The union wants an investigation, feeling the library administration isn’t capable of dealing with this. They say that they were promised the library finances were stable a short time ago when clearly that was not the case. They also point out that a couple managers received 15% pay raises right before the budget problem was revealed.

I think that I can save a lot of time here; they spent too much, for too long, ignored it and now they can’t.

The union described the situation as “the most generous reading of this situation is that library administration severely underestimated the scale and budget shortfall in the numbers they provided in December. Yet that would still amount to severe financial negligence.”

Sadly, this kind of management and thinking permeates state spending, and has for a while. Don’t make cuts necessary to sustain and do core functions well and efficiently. Just keep spending and expanding, and of course taking from taxpayers.

As far as the library goes, the Executive Director Cheryl Heywood was quoted in The Chronicle article as saying “she’s been aware of the pending budget crisis since she started in her role in 2013 and has been working on implementing long-termed solutions over the years to address it. We’ve introduced all sorts of efficiencies. Over time we have run out of options.”

I’m not certain what those “efficiencies” actually were, but clearly they were nowhere near enough.

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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@gmail.com.