Looks like nobody likes a ghost bill.
The Seattle Weekly weighed in yesterday on Senate Bill 6853, the title-only tax bill sponsored by Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island.
"It's a strange way to way to run an open government," writes reporter Rick Anderson.
Early on, the Washington Policy Center was rightly concerned about the text that would eventually be inserted into the legislation.
AWB's Amber Carter, who gave the only comment on the bill in a hearing before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, was also leery.
"If this bill is intended to be a vehicle to repeal certain tax incentives, that may or may not be OK," Carter said. 'We just don't know what the discussion is yet, and we'd rather be part of that discussion than get surprised at a later point."
We now know what's in SB 6853: Nine pages of "amendments" to the blank original version calling for various reviews of tax incentives.
Not even the Weekly -- which supports the elimination of some tax incentives -- likes the approach.
"It's what advocates of 'tax preference' reform were hoping for," Anderson writes. "But was it necessary for Rockefeller and his co-sponsors to subvert the sunshine process of open and fair debate?"
It's worth noting that one of the amendments would require the recipient of any tax preference to provide the dollar amount of the tax savings.
The justification?
Quoting from the bill: "To ensure greater transparency."
If that wasn't scary enough, a second ghost has appeared on the scene, frightening the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF).
House Bill 3191, which began life as an empty placeholder, has turned into a "monster tax bill that raises everything from Business and Occupation rates for targeted industries to the price of cigarettes and candy," writes the EFF's Amber Gunn.
Let's hope this isn't a trend.
Granted, the sunshine of democracy can be scary.
But it's not nearly as frightening as a ghost bill.
