Seacat,

You usually agree with me? I always knew you had style and taste. No problem with having another opinion, let me see if I can convince you to change it.

My distaste about the license initiative, and resulting pessimism is based on some experience I have that is a little different than most folks, education and experience in government fund accounting and public finance, degrees in accounting and economics, and considerable experience in large organization management. I have run one company, and divisions of two others, so I think I have some perspective on how hard the problem of budget management may be. I also look at the problem from the private section side, but have traiing in the public finance side, so I understand some of what the structures and constraints are surrounding the budget problem.

There is a common perception that the fees that we pay for various things, such as licenses, gas taxes, ramp fees, etc., are or can be tightly linked to the service we are expecting to use as a result of paying that fee. The issue is, the fees are very rarely close to the actual cost of the underlying service, and many of the services or facilities are fairly complex. For example, a boat owner pays sales tax on the boat, gax tax to get to the ramp, a ramp fee, and a fishing license fee. He uses roads, hatcheries, game enforcement, coast guard, state patrol, water quality enforcement, and fisheries management. What are the odds that the amount of fee or tax that he pays are going to equal the cost of the service that he uses? How do you put a fee price on the value of having the safety and rescue folks ready for you if you happen to be involved in an accident?

All of these services don't just start up and stop at the drop of a hat, so if the government/the public want to have quality services, they have to be planned out and provided over time. The problem with tight funding via user fees is that user fees go up and down with the use, and so, if the usage of the fishery goes down because of bad fish returns, the money to support fisheries could go down, precisely at the time that more money is needed. To see this, think about what the fisheries enhancement fee collection must have been like over the past 7 years, as puget sound salmon fishing sucked. A lot of people quit fishing. I sold my boat, for example. So, just as the government needed my revenue to maintain the fishery, I quit contributing several of the fees helpful to maintain the boating environment. (As an aside, I purchased a salmon tag and paid the enhancement fee throughout this entire time, even though I didn't fish salmon for about five years)

If you accept that government services should be provided over a long term interval in a thoughtful manner, then, to fund those services, you need a pool of money that is not tightly linked to ups and downs in usage. This is not to say that user fees can't be part of the funding, but it would be a mistake to constrain the management expenditures to the user fee income.

What is happening in the state of washington now, is that we have modified the pool of revenue sources by removing one of the larger, more constant flow taxes. Fow better or for worse, the license fee tax had the benefit of being relatively constant in both good years and bad, and it grew with population. The sales tax goes down dramatically in bad years, as does the business and occupation tax. Bad years are when our need for social services peaks. Bad years also create conditions where the government wants to spend money to encourage business to come and stay in our state.

So the current situation creates a problem where the government's income goes down, as the need for public service rises. Bad, bad, bad. I should also be remiss if I didn't point out that the Washington state tax system levies a much higher percentage on your income than on Phil Condit's or Bill Gate's. Or, I might add, on Tim Eyeman's. I drive two new cars. I am saving over $1500 a year from the tax cut. About the same as Mr. Eyeman. I voted against the tax cut, because, unlike Tim Eyeman, I am not a greedy, selfish assh0le, and unlike many of his supporters, I believe that it is unwise for us to starve out government. It is certainly not perfect, but can you think of a better one in the world today?

We have been trying to keep the level of service we enjoy, while not paying for it, and that is unrealistic. It's easy to bash our government. It's a lot harder to contribute to solving the problem. Simplistic voting to reduce taxes, before answering the question of how we will pay for needed services is contributing to the problem. I urge you all to think carefully before siging petitions for, or voting for these measures in the future.

So, sorry for the diatribe, but, as you can tell, I have an opinion on the issue. Thanks for listening, if you got this far... I hope you will consider this line of thought in the future.