Budget & Policy Center

B&PC communications director Sandeep Kaushik was interviewed on Seattle’s top-rated NPR station about a policy brief, co-authored with research director Jeff Chapman, which found that – contrary to conventional wisdom – state and local taxes are low in Washington State compared both to other states and to the tax levels of the mid-90s. The brief found that Washington State ranked 36th of the 50 states in overall tax levels measured as a percentage of personal income, but added that the distribution of taxes across the state’ s population was deeply unfair with lower income and middle class families paying far more in taxes than their wealthier counterparts.

Let’s Focus on Real Property Tax reform

Everett Herald, May 19, 2007

In the wake of the Washington State Supreme Court’s hearing of an appeal of a lower court decision overturning I-747, the B&PC continued to push the circuit breaker in this op-ed. Executive director Remy Trupin drove home the point that lower income and middle class families alike often pay more of their income in property taxes than they can easily afford, even under the broad one percent property tax cap contained in the initiative currently under court review, and that truly effective reform could come in the form of a carefully crafted property tax rebate for those homeowners who are really being pinched by rising property assessments.

When it comes to property tax reform, there are better ways

The Olympian, April 12, 2007

B&PC research director Jeff Chapman crunched the numbers to show that the property taxes paid by a family living in a typical $250,000 Olympia home go to important public priorities: public schools ($1700), criminal justice ($400), fire and emergency medical protection ($200) and all other government services ($500). While for a family earning $100,000 a year that amounts to a good deal, for family at the median income, already struggling to make ends meet, that is a much more expensive proposition. Jeff uses this insight to suggest an innovative policy reform articulated in our major study on the state’s property tax system: a circuit breaker, which would limit property taxes so they would not go beyond a set percentage of a homeowner’s income. This idea has been successful in other states, but had not been under consideration here until the B&PC introduced it.

State Budget: Revenue Riddle

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 1, 2007

The lead editorial in this Sunday edition of the Post-Intelligencer editorial page applauded the state budget’s emphasis on education and health spending, and quoted at length from multiple B&PC analyses to explain the state’s structural deficit problem and to argue that the solution to the state’s fiscal riddle is to be found on the revenue, rather than the spending, side on the equation.

Saving for a rainy day (while the roof is leaking)

Seattle Times, March 5, 2007

Drawing on a detailed B&PC policy analysis, executive director Remy Trupin, joined by respected constitutional attorney Hugh Spitzer, the former vice-chair of the Gates Commission on tax reform (and a B&PC Board member), inject a cautionary note into the enthusiastic response to Governor Gregoire’s proposed constitutionally-mandated rainy day fund for Washington State. While the authors endorse the proposal as “an idea whose time has come,” they point out that such a fund will do little to cure the state’s growing structural deficit, and conclude that “even a carefully crafted rainy-day fund will be of full benefit only if paired with a responsible near-term effort to cure our tax system’s structural inadequacies.”

Low-income people need better loan, check options

Tacoma News Tribune, February 4, 2007

Did you know that there are far more of payday lending outlets across Washington State than there are Starbucks locations? Authors Jeff Chapman and Remy Trupin, B&PC research director and executive director respectively, draw attention to the fact that the explosive growth of such lenders, who cluster in poor neighborhoods and around military bases, is built on a foundation of loose regulation that allow them to charge their largely poor clients more than 390 percent interest on an annualized basis. This op-ed draws on Brookings Institution data to show how much money such lenders are needlessly taking out of the pockets of lower income workers statewide and proposes some potential areas of policy reform that would allow the state to better serve its working poor.

Survey Uncovers Disturbing Disparities

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 14,2006

Using the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as a jumping off point, Budget & Policy research director Jeff Chapman penned this op-ed to point out that the newly created American Community Survey produced by the Census Bureau provides an important – and disturbing – snapshot of the extent of poverty in Washington State. The fact that the ACS tells us that half of preschoolers in Bellingham are poor, that 138,000 children across the state are without health insurance, and provides other yields other troubling findings ought to fuel a renewed policy commitment to tacking poverty at the state level, Chapman argues.


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