Note: The following e-newsletter was sent to Sen. Wilson’s subscribers Aug. 18, 2025. To subscribe to Sen. Wilson’s e-newsletters, click here.
Seventy people turned out in Long Beach July 19 as Reps. Jim Walsh, Joel McEntire and I held town hall meetings across the 19th Legislative District.
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Summer is a time for vacations, backyard barbecues and long afternoons on the beach. For those of us who serve in the Legislature, it’s also a time for town hall meetings. In our state, the Legislature meets part-time, and the summer months are when we reconnect with the people we serve. Over the last several weeks, I joined with my seatmates in the 19th Legislative District for a series of public meetings about the issues before us in Olympia.
Sometimes it isn’t easy explaining what the Legislature does – especially after a session like the one we just had. Under current legislative leadership, we often find ourselves the bearers of bad news. And yet I always come away from meetings like these feeling energized.
What I love is hearing from you, the people of the 19th District. We heard more common sense in these town halls than in a month of Senate floor debates. You want to know what we are doing to promote public safety, keep Washington affordable, increase the supply of housing, build better roads and schools, and get the homeless the treatment they need. These are the people’s priorities. They should be the Legislature’s as well.
Meeting with constituents at Longview Community College after the July 26 Longview meeting. Hearing from the people is the best part of any town hall. If you weren’t able to make it to our town halls this summer, I still want to hear from you. You can drop me a letter, send me an email, or leave me a message using the contact information below. You also can take our survey by clicking on this link.
Legislative leaders hint at another tax increase
This year’s Legislature passed the biggest tax increase in state history, and already majority Democrats are talking about another. That’s what happens when you pass new taxes to cover a spending problem and you do nothing to address the underlying issue.
This year’s tax increases total $14.15 billion over the next four years – a staggering number reflecting the failure of current legislative leaders to keep spending under control. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of it. Now Gov. Bob Ferguson is telling us we are in the middle of the biggest budget crisis we’ve ever had, and it’s all the fault of that fellow in the White House. When people start making excuses this early, it’s a sure sign more tax increases are around the corner.
Part of it has to do with Medicaid. The state dramatically expanded public health care programs when federal subsidies were increased under the Affordable Care Act 13 years ago. Everyone knew the additional federal funds would expire at the end of 2025. The real problem is that our colleagues did nothing to prepare for it at the same time they spent us into a budget crisis.
Another problem is a faltering economy. This year’s Legislature spent nearly $80 billion and left just $80 million in reserve. Now state economists have reduced their projections and the reserve has diminished to $2 million. That’s a safety margin of 0.002 percent. Does anyone doubt we will be in the red by January?
Keep in mind, a major contributing factor to this cooling trend is the massive tax increase our colleagues passed this year. I am afraid our state will remain on this downward spiral as long as the answer to every problem is higher taxes and more spending.
Olympia abusing emergency clause
By declaring an emergency 47 times in this last legislative session, Washington lawmakers deny voters the last word
Note: The following op-ed appeared in the Cheney Free Press and other Eastern Washington weeklies the week of June 4, 2025. In this piece, I describe an abuse of the legislative process that squelches the public’s voice.
Last year the Washington Legislature passed one of those high-handed virtue-signaling bills so popular with our green friends in the majority party. HB 1589 allows the state’s largest private utility to exit the natural gas business and shunt billions of dollars in shutdown costs to its customers. Gas and electricity prices will soar in Puget Sound Energy’s service territory, business will be disrupted and homeowners will face enormous costs to replace gas-powered appliances at their own expense.
Now, back in 2024, everyone knew a million PSE customers would be livid when they found out about it. So the legislative Democrats who authored this bill did a clever thing. They added what we call an “emergency clause.” They declared the bill “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, or support of the state government and its institutions.” This boilerplate phrase allowed the bill to take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature. Most importantly, it meant the people were prevented from filing a referendum to overturn it.
What happened last year with HB 1589 is really the poster case for emergency-clause reform. Increasingly this exception, permitted by the constitution, is being misused to prevent voters from overturning legislation they oppose. This year one in eleven bills introduced in the Washington Legislature contained an emergency clause, 169 in all, and 47 were signed into law. These included the year’s most controversial bills and the ones the people would most likely overturn if they could, enormous tax increases and odious policy measures increasing the power and intrusiveness of state government.
Under our constitution, a bill normally takes effect 90 days after adjournment of a legislative session. During this window, the public can petition to overturn the new law, by collecting signatures to place a referendum on the ballot and giving voters an up-or-down choice. The signature requirement, 162,258 at present, is only half of what is required for an initiative, and referendums cannot easily be blocked by lawsuits and interference from the courts.
Clearly some bills address emergencies and should take effect immediately, like a measure this session funding wildfire relief. But most emergency clauses can’t pass the straight-face test, and are a ruse to prevent uppity voters from overturning the Legislature.
Take the natural gas bill. The polar ice caps weren’t going to melt if we waited 90 days. The emergency clause forced opponents to file an initiative, at double the expense. Although the people voted overwhelmingly for the initiative last fall, it has been mired by court challenges and may never take effect.
That’s just one example. Our majority colleagues passed the capital gains income tax in 2021 with an emergency clause, even though the tax would take two years to implement. Hardly an emergency, and while the bill supported state government, that’s sort of a catch-all excuse. This year’s most controversial policy bill declares that repealing the 2024 parental rights initiative is somehow an emergency.
For many years, the state Supreme Court was willing to review challenges to emergency clauses and threw them out about half the time. But starting with a case in 2005, it has deferred to lawmakers to decide when an emergency exists. The Court should stop abrogating its responsibility. We also should pass reforms requiring findings of emergency that can be reviewed and challenged. But first things first, I think the Democrats who presently control the Legislature should re-read the first line of the state constitution, which says government derives its power from the consent of the people. The people’s voices should never be put on mute.
– Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, is ranking Republican on the Senate State Government, Tribal Affairs and Elections Committee.
Thanks for reading!
Sen. Jeff Wilson
19th Legislative District
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Telephone: (360) 786-7636
Email: Jeff.Wilson@leg.wa.gov
Mailing address: P.O. Box 40419 /Olympia, WA 98504
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