Justices should leave Initiative 747 alone

The Washington Supreme Court is weighing whether to overturn Initiative 747 on the basis of a piddling technicality.

That would be a huge mistake. This is one case where the court really should heed the election returns.

Voters blessed the initiative in 2001 with a 58 percent majority. As initiative results go, that’s close to acclamation. And the voters knew full well what they were doing.

There are four plaintiffs in this case. Only one of them – Whitman County – is a local government. The others are all nonprofit groups.

That’s not surprising, because no local government this side of the mountains would dare to ask the courts to overturn such a popular initiative designed to slow the rise of unpopular property taxes.

The initiative did go too far in setting a 1 percent annual cap on the amount local governments could increase their regular properties without voter approval. That overly stringent limit does not begin to keep up with inflation.

Many local governments around the state, from cities to fire districts to library districts, have been forced to curtail services or ask voters to approve “levy lid lifts” to maintain services. That aside, the Legislature has not had the temerity to repeal or amend Initiative 747, nor has the general citizenry been clamoring to do away with it.

Opponents of the law claim voters might have been confused when they approved Initiative 747. The text of the ballot measure referred to a previous Tim Eyman initiative that had already been invalidated by the time Initiative 747 reached the ballot. The earlier initiative was similar to I-747 but set the cap at 2 percent.

But Eyman and his backers had no way of knowing that the first initiative would be tossed out by the courts before their second initiative would reach the ballot. They made no error in drafting Initiative 747.

Nor did voters have any trouble understanding the intent of Initiative 747. The arguments in the statewide voters pamphlet accurately described the issue.

To put it bluntly, the plaintiffs’ argument is hypertechnical and borderline disingenuous. The Supreme Court has tossed out some of Eyman’s initiatives, and for good reason: They had serious legal flaws. Initiative 747 is bad policy because it is too heavy-handed, but it is not legally flawed in any significant way.

The court would be wise not to mess with this one.