Working, poor should vote ‘no’ on Initiative 2109

By Johanna Standish

The Washington state Legislature must, by law, adequately fund education.

In 2022 they passed a capital gains excise tax which, in 2023, raised $896,000 earmarked for statewide education and school construction. Only people who sell or transfer investment earnings of $250,000 or more per year pay this excise tax.

You and I paid not a penny of it, and, if we defeat the initiative, are unlikely to do so in the future, unless, as individuals, we graduate to much higher income/return brackets. In fact, in 2023, the State Department of Revenue reported that just 3,354 investors, statewide, paid this tax. No one in Grays Harbor was taxed and only 11 people in all Southwest Washington paid it.

So who will pay a new tax to replace this important school funding should Initiative 2109 pass?

Us. Working people and the poor.

Tell your friends and neighbors who wins and who loses if this initiative passes. Vote “no” on I 2109

Organizations opposing Initiative 2109: League of Women Voters, Stop Greed, Civic Ventures, Invest in Washington Now, Moms Rising Together and Permanent Defense Washington

Read the letter in The Aberdeen Daily World.