State lawmakers outdid themselves this year in the assortment of ways they chose to extract more bucks from you, your neighbor, and even your friends in Oregon.<\/p>\n
They passed and Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed 51 bills containing a means of generating money to help pay for what the state does now and will try to do in the near future for its 7.5 million residents.<\/p>\n
In sheer numbers, the Class of 2019 outproduced their predecessors<\/a> in this arena.<\/p>\n There were 17 tax and fee bills <\/a>enacted in 2018 and 32 in <\/a>2017<\/a>, according to statistics compiled by the Office of Financial Management.<\/p>\n In the four years before that, the high-water mark was 30. It occurred in 2015 when, like in 2017 and 2019, a new two-year budget got written. There tends to be more tax and fee changes in such years.<\/p>\n Some of this year’s changes are starting to take effect.<\/p>\n On the fee front, for example, people will pay a few dollars more to get a copy of a death certificate, file a small claims court action or transact business with a vehicle licensing subagent.<\/p>\n If you only fish for smelt, a new law says you will soon need a special license to do so. And the state is going to allow delivery robots to operate on public sidewalks. You must fork out $50 to register each one you want to deploy.<\/p>\n It was on taxes where the political battles were most heated and where the public reaction may be most strong.<\/p>\n During the session, Democrats used their majorities in the House and Senate to muscle past resistant Republicans in order to pass a gamut of measures.<\/p>\n Residents of Oregon and other states without a sales tax are no longer exempt from paying it in Washington. Oil companies will be paying a higher tax on the amount of petroleum they move. And if you vape, prepare to have products taxed by the milliliter starting this October.<\/p>\n This January, the tax rate paid by an estimated 82,000 professional service businesses will rise a little. It will be going up a lot more for a handful of Big Banks.<\/p>\n Lurking down the road in 2022 is a new paycheck deduction for a first-in-the-nation program to provide assistance for long-term care. Also looming, tolls on the southern end of Interstate 405.<\/p>\n And the list of tax and fee bills compiled by the Office of Financial Management actually excludes two pieces of legislation with noticeable pocketbook impacts.<\/p>\n One is the two-year transportation budget, a provision of which is spurring a hike in fares on state ferries. The other lifted the cap on local school levies which will result in higher property tax rates for homeowners in some school districts.<\/p>\n Add all of this up and the resulting new revenue will enable a significant expansion of programs and services for children, seniors, college students, those with mental health issues and those who are homeless.<\/p>\n It’s also triggered another Tim Eyman tax-limiting initiative. He vows to file signatures July 5 to get his measure on the November ballot. We’ll see.<\/p>\n Regardless, Republicans will be talking to voters in 2020 about the amount of fees and taxes raised in the midst of a strong economy.<\/p>\n And for a few Democrats, this year’s performance could come back to haunt them.<\/p>\n Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@herald net.com. Twitter: @dospueblos.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They passed 51 bills to bring in more money. Democrats pushed major tax hikes past a resistant GOP. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":41268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-41267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41267"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}