Knute,

Did her powerpoint include taxing Indian Gaming? How about removing any green energy tax subsidies? When the Governor implements Mr. Riefman's proposal and Microsoft moves it's headquaters to British Columbia, will she implore Obama to start a trade war?

Why doesn't Mayor McGinn hire Mr. Riefman and let him prove his theory on a smaller scale in Seattle? Or maybe the business unfriendly Executive Constantine could hire him to run King County's tax policy.

Yes, MSFT is a quite portable corporation, at least compared to Boeing.

It's not likely that the Governor or the Legislature will simply raise the sales tax (everyone pays that and a boost would be unpopular) but, if they have to raise taxes, that's what they should do. What Knute suggest is much more likely; find a constituency with limited voting power and tax them. Software, professionals (not including lawyers), transport industry, fees on parks, stuff like that.

Great idea. Since we just lost Boeing's new plant due to the hostile business and labor climate in our state, let's go after Microsoft. Since they have development centers all over the world, it will be easy for them to move more offshore over time.

When will government ever learn that Companies will re-allocate labor and operations, not to avoid taxes, but to be competitive globally? Just ask Detroit how well it worked for State government and labor to continually attack the big three during the '70s and '80s. Higher cost of doing business means Companies are less competitive, which means fewer jobs, less tax revenue, etc.

Perhaps Gregoire should be encouraging business to come to our State. Not flee from it.

Since early on in the Booth Gardner Administration, we've had steady revenue growth, and state budgeteers have built very expensive programs for education, corrections, ecology, fisheries, natural resources, parks, health care, while promulgating rules on any social or economic activity to come along not operated consistent with bureaucratic (and they're mostly Democrats given 25 years of continuous statehouse rule) or legislative ideology. I'm a lifelong D, but let's face the fact that current programs are more than we can afford, and we need to radically restructure them to fit our current means.

Our 09-11 biennial state budget is about $32 billion and we're bringing in about $22 billion. We have huge new costs on the horizon, including a pension liability that could eat up a significant percentage of the state's income in the future all by itself. We need to take state government apart and rebuild it in a way that is more sustainable, built on realistic revenue estimates moving forward. We're not going to "recover" to previous consumption levels, and so state revenues won't reflect previous budget levels. Our competitiveness as a region has changed, in some part because we've made it "habitable" in Knute's words. We're the greenest place in the US, and that's expensive. The future has to be premised on far less state revenue, not because business interests are powerful in Olympia (they're simply not, it's been labor dems in control for the past decade), but because there's not the guts on the part of the Legislature to create a progressive tax system. We're now learning we can't have all the bells and whistles we want unless we've got the guts to create a revenue stream to support them.

A lot of these "expensive programs" are attempts to remedy the damage done when prosperity was easy because nobody paid the real costs of what they were doing.

And they're not frills. We've put off these cleanups and amelioration until it became obvious that doing nothing was costing us more than repairing the damage. People, and natural resources, that are ill because of environmental damage are not a net plus for our economy.

Pinning our economic hopes on MS is like the young man who takes a philosophy degree in college without figuring out some way to make a living. Getting a fair share of taxation out of the software industry is going to be pretty hard in a state that doesn't have an income tax.

As long as this state keeps its monopoly on selling liquor--when I'm sure letting private enterprise do the job would both save the state overhead and pension monies and actually bring in more revenue from additional liquor sales--, then I can't take any of its so-called belt-tightening tactics very seriously. Cops, schools, infrastructure, parks, social services--these are matters of state business and ought to stay that way. But liquor sales???

It's time for a tax increase! And not the regressive sales tax, which is part of the problem here--in a recession the sales tax revenues obviously plunge. Does Gregoire have the cojones to institute a state income tax?

As for the Microsoft loophole--I agree that the state government's not in a great position to get Microsoft to do anything it chooses not to do. We need some major reforms to make corporations more accountable to communities.

It amazes me that big business and capitalist in general would rather let the country/state go down the tube and do a lousy job of infrastructure, education and helping people in need, than pay tax's of any kind. Its not like they are special or can pop off to Mars or somewhere if we make them pay their share. Or do they like driving on pothole filled roads, hiring kids who can't add or subtract, seeing their dear ol' granny in a junky senior citizen center? What's with it with these capitalist? Do they think being a business proprietor gives them special privileges or the right to a semi free ride. I realize they pay some tax's but Microsoft and other big companies are not going to sink or swim over paying the tax's they should. Lousy airplane design and planning, or X boxes that don't produce like the adds say are going to sink them faster than tax's!

The problem is that the corporations are all competing with each other, so unless they're all held accountable to the public interest, it's in their individual interests to get away with as much piracy as they can, offload costs to the public sector in the form of pollution, health care costs, below-living wages, etc. So, we need a way to hold them all accountable.

Of course we, the people, are the only body powerful enough to really do so. If only we could figure out how to learn from the extremist disasters of the 20th century, both on the left and the right, and move forward in a nonreactionary way.

The politicians are getting closer to coming to the reality that then end of spending freely is here, particularly so at the state level where they can't merely print more money. I read today where adding a Keno game, a.k.a. another voluntary tax, is being considered. But, as the writer pointed out, it's a drop in the bucket. Much more serious measures will be needed, e.g. eliminating tax loopholes, increasing user fees towards covering costs (fewer subsidies), cutting expenses, and hopefully someday reforming our haphazard tax system. A Republican legislator has a great idea, that of the Governor calling a special session for December, that way any taxes would become effective 1/1/2010 vs. next summer, helping us to close the gap much, much faster and less steeply. I agree with him, but the Governor seems to hope for business as usual to return, as so many of our "leaders" are doing these days.

RE the governor's shortfall: Amazing! The Legislative Workgroup for the SR 520 Bridge Replacement and HOV project--that's just one part of what WSDOT is now calling the SR 520 Program, the part that runs from I-5 to Medina--just endorsed a seven-lane wide, 30-feet high design that will cost exactly half of that $9.3 billion or some other $9.3 billion down the pot-holed road. WSDOT has been telling us that the floating part of the bridge is in danger of failing in the next storm or the one after that. Instead of fixing the floating part of the bridge, the state is insisting on a mammoth $4.65 billion project that will irrevocably ruin one of the most beautiful viewsheds in our city. The governor endorsed an original six-lane design that has morphed into seven lanes over the Portage Bay Bridge, with higher pontoons topped by columns and then the bridge deck (about three stories high) for the floating part of the bridge. At a full City Council hearing last week, WSDOT floated the idea of High Capacity Transit (light rail) above the SOV, HOV, and bus traffic, which would take the height of the floating bridge to about five stories. Communities adjacent to the bridge--Laurelhurst, Madison Park, Montlake, the Boating Community, Portage Bay, North Capitol Hill, and the Roanoke Park Historic District--are opposing this monstrous design and advocating immediately fixing the bridge that WSDOT says will fail. Then we can take a deep breath and a hard look at this 1960s-style project that will put backed up single occupancy vehicles alongside and into our city's neighborhoods. WSDOT's "traffic congestion management program," that is, variable tolling, which was developed to discourage SOV traffic and permit us to study demand, if both SR 520 and I-90 are tolled, is now viewed in the Legislative Workgroup's laugh of a "Financial Strategy" as a significant revenue-raising tool to finance this grandiose project. The irony that a successful traffic congestion management program would result in reduced tolling revenues is lost on the Legislative Workgroup. And on the King County Council, which endorsed this ugly design last week. We can only hope that the irony and the certain damage to our beautiful city is not lost on the City Council, which will vote December 8 on whether to endorse it, too. (Write to them!) Health care is slashed, good social programs fall by the wayside, class sizes grow, our infrastructure is dangerous--I haven't even mentioned global warming and our dependence on oil--and our government bodies want to spend an astronomical amount of money, half of our discretionary funds, on more concrete and exhaust. The massive 8 to 22 feet noise walls designed into the project to protect the neighborhoods from increased air and noise pollution would damage the views not only from the neighborhoods but from the bridge itself, a SEPA-protectd Scenic Highway that offers sensational views of Mt. Rainier and the other Cascades to travelers east across Portage Bay and the lake and the Olympics to travelers west. This is nuts. When the time comes, that is, when we have the money, the inexorable progress of events will have shown us the wisdom of a more modest, green four-lane design that widens shoulders for disabled vehicles, provides for bicycles and pedestrians, and anticipates light rail handled intelligently. For now, funds earmarked for transportation should be spent on fixing life-threatening vulnerable infrastructure. And yes, we are long overdue for a progressive income tax.
Erin O'Connor

— Erin O\'connor