No End in Sight for Special Session

The tax and spending impasse in Olympia continues. In this column, I comment on the budget stalemate.) The editorial board at the Herald of Everett thinks it's time for the governor to bring out the hammer.

She should state flatly that she’ll veto the Senate’s sales tax proposal, which she has said is too risky to a weak economy. That should be enough to break a stalemate that has already kept lawmakers in session for an extra two weeks.

And the Columbian is also fed up.

... they say that getting Democrats to agree on anything is like herding cats. This is an insult to cats. We suspect achieving the near-impossible fusion of feral felines would be much easier than trying to scratch out any progress in the state Legislature.

Some very slight progress in the appointment of a conference committee, as reported by the Spokesman-Review, also in the Herald.

Austin Jenkins reports that the Senate may be close to giving up on the sales tax increase. But, he concludes:

Bottom line: the Senate may be showing some signs of softening up, but a go-home deal does not yet appear anywhere close at hand.

Possibly complicating things next year, as if there's not enough to worry about, the environmentalists' attempted overreach with the hazardous substance tax this session has provoked a lawsuit that may lead to the total elimination of the tax. Jim Brunner has the story in the Seattle Times.

Angered by environmentalists' push to more than double the tax on oil and other chemicals, an association of gas-station owners has sued the state to overturn the tax altogether.

Filed this week in King County Superior Court, the lawsuit argues the state's hazardous-substances tax is unconstitutional.

Interesting times.