Tag: Steve Hobbs

Elections, State of Washington

PubliCola Questions: Secretary of State Steve Hobbs

Steve Hobbs Voter Guide image

By Erica C. Barnett

The Secretary of State has historically been a largely administrative position; the primary duties of the office are to oversee and certify elections, manage the state’s physical and digital archives, and register corporations and nonprofits. In recent years, though—perhaps you’ve noticed—the mundane job of overseeing elections has become fiercely contested ground.

Despite Washington’s blue-state status, we’re still susceptible to disinformation and misinformation campaigns that threaten to erode voters’ trust in the voting system and election outcomes. Cyberattacks are becoming more aggressive and sophisticated, forcing the secretary of state’s office to keep up with evolving technology, and even benign changes, like moving local races to even-year elections and implementing alternative voting systems like ranked-choice voting, require a level of technical knowledge unheard of even 20 years ago.

In other words, it’s a good time to pay attention to who’s running for secretary of state.

Incumbent Steve Hobbs, a longtime state legislator and moderate Democrat appointed to the job by Gov. Jay Inslee last year, says his military background (he’s a lieutenant colonel in the Washington Army National Guard), on-the-job experience, and enthusiasm for innovation has earned him a full term; if elected, he would be the first Democrat elected the position in more than 60 years. Challenger Julie Anderson, the Pierce County auditor, says her years of experience as a local election official makes her a better fit; she’s running without a party label for a position she believes should be above partisan politics.

PubliCola spoke to both candidates for secretary of state earlier this month.

PubliCola (ECB): You were appointed to this job a year ago and don’t have any prior experience overseeing an elections office, which is something your opponent has brought up on the campaign trail. What kind of learning curve did you have, and do you think your experience so far qualifies you for this position?

Steve Hobbs: (SH): There was really no learning curve—hardly any. Because of my leadership experience from being in the military and managing large organizations, plus 15 years in the state legislature, serving the National Security Agency, being a public affairs officer, and having graduated from the various Department of Defense schools that study strategic threats and information warfare, it was easy to step into the job. The only thing I had to learn a little bit about was the other functions of state government. I knew about corporations, charities, and nonprofits, because I interacted with them before. But I hadn’t interacted a lot with [the] state legacy [division], which is basically our history of our state. So that was really exciting, kind of diving into there and seeing if we can take it in a new direction and talk to different people that affected the history of our state.

“When you go to the state level, you’re overseeing different counties and assisting in the process of elections. We’re doing the certification. We’re assisting with the outreach. And on top of that, the position of Secretary of State has evolved [to include] the security of our elections and combating misinformation, and that’s something that [my opponent] Julie [Anderson] does not have.”

We have state library services in our state institutions—our prisons and our state hospitals. So I wanted to know, can we use this facility and the people in it as a way to help with rehabilitation and help prepare those who are incarcerated for life outside. And so we’re looking at things like increasing the number of people [working] in those libraries, and providing an opportunity for the incarcerated to learn skills to tell their story. So for example, we are looking at doing a prison podcast very similar to “Ear Hustle” in the California penal system, I would like to start a pilot project in Purdy [the women’s prison in Gig Harbor], because I don’t think there is a women’s prison podcast.

And then I would like to bring in other items to the library’s besides movies and books and music. I’m a big nerd. I don’t hide it. I’ve got strong ties to the tabletop gaming industry here in the state of Washington, and I’d like to have a games library [in prisons], and I would like to see if we can have therapy sessions in there. There’s this nonprofit called Game to Grow. They use [role-playing games] as a form of therapy for kids with autism and developmental disabilities, and they were talking about doing this with veterans for PTSD. Maybe we can do that in our state institutions. Why not? If it’s going to help people, let’s try to help people with it. So yeah, I’m really excited about this. And we got a bunch of new books, because some of the books are really old.

ECB:  Your opponent says she has more experience than you as an election administrator. How do you respond to that, and can you give me an example of something you’ve learned on the job?

SH: It’s kind of apples and oranges when you go to the state level, because you’re not running an election, you’re overseeing different counties and assisting in the process of elections. We’re doing the certification. We’re assisting with the outreach. And on top of that, the position of Secretary of State has evolved [to include] the security of our elections and combating misinformation, and that’s something that Julie does not have.

This year alone, we had to face three very sophisticated disinformation campaigns and a cyber threat, and you don’t get that at [the county] level. And you have to maneuver with the legislature to get your budgets and policies passed. So I understand she does have the experience at the county level that I don’t have, but she doesn’t have the experience that I have at the statewide level and at the experience of combating these outside threats that are threatening our elections.

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ECB: What have you done or will you do to address the kind direct misinformation or disinformation campaigns that now routinely occur during elections?

SH: We have three ways to attack it. Number one is just reacting to a misinformation campaign the best we can—reaching out to our partners, reaching out on social media platforms, to correct the record. Two is a public service campaign, or information campaign, educating the voters about the process of elections. We have done such an awesome job, both county auditors and secretaries of state across the United States, telling people hey, don’t forget to vote.

What we have done a bad job on is talking about what happens before you get the ballot, and after you get the ballot and you submit it. Simple things like, hey, did you know that every signature is checked? Did you know that you can actually go to the election center in any county office auditor’s office, and you can see the process, you can see the ballots coming in, you can see the balance being counted? Did you know the tabulation machines that actually count the ballots are not connected to the internet, and you can’t hack into them? The average citizen doesn’t know about that. And because of that, these false narratives have been able to take hold because there’s nothing to counter it.

And then the other part is educating young people before they become voting age. A lot of them are sophisticated, and that’s great, because they can identify disinformation better than we can, but we trying to look at different ways to engage them. People my age and older will typically retweet or reshare Facebook posts without taking the time to find out, who is this person? Is this message real?

We have launched our Vote with Confidence campaign, which is informing the public about how elections are run [through ads on radio, TV and social media]. It’s all part of the effort to inform the voters this is going to take this is long term because 35 percent of Washingtonians have doubts about the election, according to a KING 5 poll. That’s a big hill to climb.

ECB: As you know, there are racial and other disparities in which ballots get rejected. Are there better ways to track ballots or inform voters when their ballots have been rejected so their votes can be counted?

SH: The only time we see curing–getting people to sign their ballot or re-signing it if the signature has changed—is usually during close elections, where both sides’ campaigns and usually the parties are involved, and they’re getting people out there to sign those forms by going door to door. There’s got to be a better way.

“I have Republican endorsements and Democratic endorsements. And I’ve been endorsed by the Association of Washington Business and by the Washington State Labor Council. So I love how I’m being attacked for being a partisan, but I’ve operated in a bipartisan manner.”

We have to do two things. One is we have to study why this is happening. And the other thing is, maybe we can lean forward and start doing some things now. And so we are right now in the process [of developing a system]—it will not be operational until next year—which will text the voter that their ballot has been rejected. Because right now, you can either go online to find out, or you’re going to get a letter in the mail, which is highly inefficient, and maybe a phone call. And a lot of this happens after election night at 8pm. So wouldn’t it be nice to get a text message right away, the moment your ballot is rejected, because you’ve forgotten to sign the ballot, or you didn’t sign because English is not your first language?

ECB: What have you done to improve language access in other areas, such as informing voters about elections before they vote?

SH: Language access is definitely an issue, because the only way you get voter guides out there [in languages other than English] is, you have to reach a minimum threshold in a particular county. So for example, Skagit County has a large Hispanic population, but because they didn’t reach the population threshold, you don’t have the voters’ guide going out there in Spanish, mostly because the county commissioners are not supportive.

What I would like to do that is a combination of things. One is trying to get more money in the legislature to provide funding to these counties so they can put out those guides, because a lot of it is driven by money. The other thing we’ve done is, I’ve created a department to do more voter outreach and education. I’m mirroring what is happening in King County under [Elections Director] Julie Wise, which is the trusted messenger program, where we hire people from a community that knows the language, that knows the culture, that can help us do the outreach. Now, I can’t hire enough people to do this. So we also have to team up with organizations in various communities.

ECB: Your opponent is running as a nonpartisan and has said the secretary of state should be a nonpartisan office. How do you respond to that, and what does it mean to you to run as a Democrat for this position? And should this position even be elected?

SH: I do think it should be elected. In terms of partisan or nonpartisan, I don’t think it matters too much. I think at this particular time, people trust Democrats more because what happened on January 6. But the thing is, the only way to change this office to nonpartisan is to pass a bill in the legislature, and they’re not going to do that the because it’s a two-party system. Continue reading “PubliCola Questions: Secretary of State Steve Hobbs” →

Elections, endorsements

Secretary of State: PubliCola Picks Steve Hobbs

 

For secretary of state, PubliCola picks incumbent Steve Hobbs, although his opponent, Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, is also highly qualified for this position.

PubliCola Picks graphicJulie Anderson, the nonpartisan candidate for this technically partisan job, is versed in election law, knowledgeable about both the well-known and obscure aspects of the secretary of state’s office, and will do a capable job if elected. As Pierce County auditor since 2009, Anderson has ample experience overseeing elections, maintaining and ensuring access to public records, and implementing complex IT upgrades—boring-sounding stuff that’s critical to any functioning 21st century democracy. She wants to modernize the office, which still has one foot in the 20th century; for example, she proposes creating alternatives to handwritten signatures for voter validation and preserving complex digital documents in their original form, so that an interactive map, for example, doesn’t show up in the state archives as a static image.

Hobbs, a longtime state legislator appointed secretary of state by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2021, has also proven his qualifications for the position, establishing a new division to combat election disinformation and taking down several cybersecurity threats in real time. To address racial disparities in ballot rejections (and to ensure more ballots are counted), Hobbs has directed his office to develop a system that will send text messages to voters whose signatures have been rejected, giving them more time to contact their local elections office and make sure their vote counts.

In our interview, Hobbs also emphasized the need to expand access to voting information and ballots in languages other than English; currently, a county only has to provide voting materials in other languages if more than 5 percent of its population “are members of a single language minority group, have depressed literacy rates, and do not speak English very well,” according to federal voting rights law. The longtime ex-legislator said he would lobby lawmakers to fund additional voting materials for minority language groups and hire trusted community messengers to distribute voting information, a tactic that has worked in other arenas, including fighting misinformation about COVID vaccines.

Steve Hobbs Voter Guide image

Both Anderson and Hobbs are strong candidates. So why are we endorsing Hobbs over Anderson? It goes back to that seemingly simple label: “Nonpartisan.” In an ideal world, the job of overseeing elections would not only be nonpartisan, it probably wouldn’t even be elected—it’s pretty weird, when you think about it, that we fickle, partisan voters get to decide who holds a fundamentally administrative position. But we don’t live in a perfect world; we live in a hyperpartisan, fragile democracy in which one party believes in free and fair elections and the other believes COVID was a hoax and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election despite no evidence of fraud. In this context, in this election year, declaring yourself “nonpartisan” is a denial of the real forces that threaten our democracy—not just against cyber warfare and election disinformation, but the future of free and fair elections. For this reason, PubliCola picks Democrat Steve Hobbs for secretary of state.

PubliCola’s editorial board is Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit.

legislature, State of Washington, Taxes, Transit, Transportation

Advocates Say It’s Time to Ditch the Old Transportation Funding Process
Anna Zivarts, Disability Rights Washington

by Leo Brine

Transportation advocates were actually pleased when lawmakers ended the most recent legislative session without passing a new transportation package.

After the transportation committees released their proposed revenue packages late in the session, transportation accessibility groups and environmentalists were disappointed by the outdated investment priorities. Wanting a more equitable transportation package, advocates repeated a line of critique they’ve been making for years: The state needs to find new transportation revenue sources and free up revenue that is otherwise restricted to highway spending.

However, and perhaps because their recommendations have gone unheeded for a decade, a new, more sweeping critique emerged in 2021: It’s time to dump the whole politicized “transportation package” model and create a new framework that assesses and prioritizes the state’s actual transportation needs.

Anna Zivarts, Director of the Disability Mobility Initiative for Disability Rights Washington, said the current system is a “pork model,” where legislators pick projects for their districts rather than investing in projects that make the whole state transportation system function better.

“A transportation system has to work across the state,” she said. “If you have everyone competing, that’s not going to create the best system overall.”

Advocates say lawmakers have too much power over which projects get funded and have political incentivizes to fund major highway expansion projects rather than expand transit services or improve pedestrian infrastructure. Featuring friction over projects, funding, regionalism, mode split, and maintenance versus new construction, the legislative ritual, akin to passing a kidney stone, played out in 2003, 2005, and 2015.

A new, more sweeping critique emerged in 2021: It’s time to dump the whole politicized “transportation package” model and create a new framework that assesses and prioritizes the state’s actual transportation needs.

In April, during the last weeks of the session, the House and Senate transportation committee chairs, Rep. Jake Fey (D-27, Tacoma) and Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens), shared their transportation revenue proposals. The House proposal would have spent $22 billion over 16 years, earmarking the majority of the dollars for highway projects, with about 20 percent going to multimodal projects. The Senate’s proposal would have spent $18 billion over the same period, with less than 10 percent going to multimodal projects.

Leah Missik, transportation policy manager for Climate Solutions, said lawmakers’ proposed investments in multimodal projects were a major step up from previous packages, but “continuously investing in road expansions is certainly not the way we want to go.”

In order to fix the state’s transportation system, Paulo Nunes-Ueno of Front and Centered, a BIPOC environmental group, said, “this package process needs to go.”  Transportation packages never meet people’s needs and are a hodgepodge of project ideas from legislators, he said. Instead, Nunes-Ueno says lawmakers should establish climate, infrastructure, and safety goals, and allocate funding to state and local agencies that would decide how to allocate funding on projects.

Hester Serebrin, policy director for the Transportation Choices Coalition, said politics play too great a role when lawmakers craft transportation packages. She said lawmakers are more likely to invest in large projects, like highway expansions or major road repairs, because they garner more attention than smaller multimodal projects. “This process doesn’t incentivize … projects that help people travel between places,” Serebrin said. “Instead it incentivizes larger, geographically isolated projects.”

Other advocates agree that politics should play less of a role in the state’s transportation system. Vlad Gutman, Climate Solutions’ Washington director, like Nunes-Ueno, wants legislators to devise a set of goals and values for Washington’s transportation infrastructure and allocate funding to state agencies who can come up with projects and programs to accomplish the goals.

In order to fix the state’s transportation system, Paulo Nunes-Ueno said, “this package process needs to go.”  Instead, Nunes-Ueno wants lawmakers to set climate, infrastructure, and safety goals and allocate funding to state and local agencies.

“We need to be selecting projects and investing and designing our transportation system in a sort of objective, metric-based way that also recognizes and inputs the needs of communities and people who are impacted and stakeholders of transportation,” he said.

To do so, he argued, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) should study the needs of the state and select projects based on those needs, “instead of [lawmakers] sort of piecemealing it by selecting projects one at a time,” Gutman said.

This participatory approach to transportation planning doesn’t make sense to Senate Transportation Chair Hobbs. “We’re in a democracy and legislators have a right to say how their districts should be supported by government,” he said.

Continue reading “Advocates Say It’s Time to Ditch the Old Transportation Funding Process” →

Business, Economy, Elections, homelessness, legislature, Morning Fizz, Police, State of Washington, Taxes

Ballot Measure Would Reinstate Sweeps, Harrell Joins Mayor’s Race, and Republicans Hedge Bets on Capital Gains
The look on mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell’s face when KOMO TV’s Jonathan Choe asked how he felt about Black-on-Asian crime, given that “you’re biracial, your mother is Japanese American and your dad’s Black”

1. After months of will-he-won’t-he speculation, three-term former city council member Bruce Harrell announced Tuesday that he’s running for mayor. As a well-known political figure who will likely have support from the Seattle business community, Harrell joins the ranks of instant frontrunners in the race, which also includes current city council president Lorena González, Chief Seattle Club director Colleen Echohawk, South East Effective Development director Lance Randall, and city council aide Andrew Grant Houston.

At a press conference outside Garfield High School, his alma mater, Harrell said he would seek public-private partnerships to fund investments in solutions to homelessness, clean up city parks where unsheltered people have taken long-term refuge during the pandemic, and work to “reimagine” the city’s police force rather than defunding it.

In a conversation with Fizz after the announcement, Harrell said the biggest problem at city hall, Harrell said, is a “lack of relationships”—between the mayor and council, the council and departments, and with outside organizations like Seattle Public Schools.

True to his past campaigns (in addition to serving three terms on the council, Harrell ran for mayor in 2013, receiving 15 percent of the primary vote), Harrell focused on style, more than policy, in our conversation. “Quite honestly, I am attracted to a situation that requires rebuilding,” Harrell said. “It’s sort of easy to hop into a leadership position when an organization is going smoothly and is high-performing. It’s a different skill set for someone to consciously jump into a situation that is plagued with dysfunction, and that doesn’t bother me.”

But he did have a few specific policy prescriptions. He said he would work to revitalize neighborhoods including, but not limited to, downtown, by promoting not just brick and mortar businesses but partnerships between small businesses (particularly women- and minority-owned) and larger ones—a kind of “business-to-business on steroids” approach to saving local businesses. “The first thing we must learn how to do is recycle our money within the economy by making sure the relationship between small businesses and big business is intact,” Harrell said.

He also said he would propose divvying up $10 million between the seven council districts so that the council member from each geographic area could determine, through conversations in that community, what local priorities should be funded. Asked how this would differ from the ongoing participatory budgeting process, which is supposed to determine how the city will spend $30 million set aside for alternatives to policing last year, Harrell said, “I think participatory budgeting is a step in the right direction, but what it still doesn’t do, I think, is have each council member directly accountable to their particular constituents in their community.”

Harrell, who grew up in the Central District and often talks about his deep roots in Seattle, provided more details about his platform in an “open letter” Tuesday morning.

2. Another former city council member, Tim Burgess, is preparing to propose a ballot measure that would change Seattle’s constitution (known as the city charter) by directing the city’s Human Services Department to fund mental health and substance abuse disorder treatment, expand access to shelter, and “collaboratively work with other City departments to ensure that City parks, playgrounds, sports fields, public spaces and sidewalks and streets (“public spaces”) remain open and clear of unauthorized encampments.”

The proposal would mandate (but not fund) new shelter and services and reinstate sweeps, including the removal of encampments that pose a “public health or safety risk,” a term that is not defined and would be subject to interpretation.

The proposal does not appear to include a funding plan.

The charter amendment would require HSD to create a plan to provide services to people living unsheltered (along with individual written “service plans” for every person living unsheltered in the city) and would “require the cleaning and removal of unauthorized encampments in public spaces as these services are available.” In addition, any encampment that poses “a public health or safety risk may be immediately removed,” the proposed amendment says.

In plain language, the proposal would mandate (but not fund) new shelter and services and reinstate sweeps, including the removal of encampments that pose a “public health or safety risk,” a term that is not defined and would be subject to interpretation.

It also directs HSD to work with prosecutors, police, and public defenders to create new “diversion” programs for people who commit non-violent offenses; these programs would include unspecificed “treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration.”

Burgess did not respond to a request for comment.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

To place a charter amendment on the ballot, proponents must get signatures from as many registered voters as 15 percent of the turnout in the most recent mayoral election, or about 33,000 people. After that, the city council can choose to enact the amendment, put it on the ballot, or add their own alternative to the mix. This last scenario played out in 2014, when the council proposed an alternative to a preschool initiative that opponents said gave too much power to unions. The council’s winning alternative was sponsored by Tim Burgess.

3. Despite claiming the Democrats’ capital gains tax legislation (SB-5096) would put an unconstitutional law in place, Republicans are worried that if it passes, taking the law to the Supreme Court will backfire and open the door for an income tax.

Luckily for the Republicans, moderate Democratic Senator Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) added an amendment to the capital gains tax during  the Senate vote that stripped the bill of its emergency clause and took out language saying that the revenue from the legislation is tied to government functions. Legislation with an emergency clause, or legislation that includes language saying it’s necessary to support the functioning of state government, can’t be overturned by voter referendum. The removal of both sections clearly signals that opponents prefer to leave the bill open to a statewide referendum, rather than battling over its legality in court. Continue reading “Ballot Measure Would Reinstate Sweeps, Harrell Joins Mayor’s Race, and Republicans Hedge Bets on Capital Gains” →

Business, legislature, Taxes, Tech

House Finance Committee Hears Testimony on Historic Capital Gains Tax Legislation

By Leo Brine

On Monday morning, the House Finance Committee took up Sen. June Robinson’s (D-38, Everett) historic capital gains tax legislation, which the Democratic-controlled Senate passed two weekends ago on March 6.

During the committee meeting, tech industry lobbyists and conservatives tried to slow the bill’s momentum. Tech lobbyists said the legislation, which calls for a 7 percent tax on capital gains of more than $250,000, would cause small tech startups to flee the state. Republicans chimed in, saying the tax wouldn’t merely drive away business, but it would drive away wealthy people and even the tech industry as a whole.

Specifically, the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) testified that the tax will harm small tech-startups’ ability to recruit employees because stock options (which count as capital gains) would likely be taxed when the employee sells them.

According to the WTIA, stock options are a “primary compensation strategy” for startups. By offering stock options, startups can pay their employees lower salaries while allowing them to buy shares of their employer’s company at a low fixed price. Employees can then sell their shares when the company goes public or is bought out.

Molly Jones, vice president of government affairs for WTIA, implied that tech startups would pack up and head out of Washington if the tax passed. “We are concerned that passage of the capital gains tax will further drive founders, startups, jobs and future drivers of employment and economic growth out of our state,” she said. Her association polled startup members and found, she said somewhat obliquely, that 32 percent were “evaluating whether to relocate their headquarters.” She did say specifically that over 10 percent had already begun looking outside of Washington.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

Republicans piled on, saying the bill will drive the state’s wealthiest to uproot and live elsewhere. They also said the tax will eventually start to affect more than the minuscule 0.23 percent of Washington residents the Democrats estimate would be impacted by the tax.

Republicans also foreshadowed their strategy going forward if the Washington State Supreme Court eventually takes up the bill, by labeling it an unconstitutional “income tax” and comparing it to previously failed income and graduated income tax bills.

House Finance Committee Chair Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle), who told PubliCola last week that the bill is a priority, kept the discussion moving; 100 people signed up to testify, though only 28 spoke. Nearly 4,000 people signed their names into the legislative record, with more than half, 2,380, signing in support.

One Seattle tech worker, Kevin Litwack, who has received stock options in the past, contradicted the spokespeople for his industry by testifying in support of the bill. “Of course, the tech industry pays well,” he said, “but we don’t need a vast fortune.” Litwack said his peers who view taxes as an obstacle to amassing huge amounts of wealth may “take their money and run,” but “even more will come to replace them, drawn by the values of community and shared responsibility that our state embodies. We, not those purely chasing wealth, are the ones you should want here to build Washington’s future.”

None of the Democratic legislators on the committee spoke to the removal of an emergency clause from the bill that would have put the tax in place immediately and protected the bill from voter referendum. Moderate Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) sponsored and passed an amendment on the Senate side that removed the clause, irking progressives such as Seattle State Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34, Seattle).

The bill will head to a finance committee executive session for a vote “soon,” Rep. Frame’s office told PubliCola. The Democrats have an 11-6 majority on the committee. From there it would go to the House floor, where the Democrats are also in control.