With a handful of days left in the 2026 legislative session, we still don’t know what will happen with some very controversial bills, such as the proposed income tax.

Based on what we’ve seen from the Senate’s majority Democrats, the final version of the new operating budget that emerges from Olympia this year will top out at over $80 billion.

It didn’t take long for majority Democrats in our state Legislature to jump off the affordability bandwagon.

Just five days before this year’s session convened, my counterpart on the Democrat side of the Senate said affordability would be a top-three priority, along with addressing the self-inflicted $1.5 billion shortfall in the state operating budget.

Republicans still seem to be alone at the state Capitol when it comes to knowing what “affordability” truly means.

The proof is in the nearly 70 bills proposed or reintroduced by majority Democrats over the past several weeks that would make living in our state even more expensive.

For more than a decade, Democrats in Olympia have complained our state’s tax code is overly regressive. That claim is made again, predictably, in Senate Bill 6346, the legislation they filed Feb. 3 to create a state income tax — in defiance of both the state constitution and the 2024 law prohibiting any kind of income tax in Washington.

Whether officials in our state like it or not, federal officers have a responsibility to enforce federal laws. That doesn’t change just because the enforcement efforts have unforeseen consequences, such as the tragic deaths of two people in Minnesota over a recent 17-day period.

On day 10 of this year’s 60-day legislative session, the state Senate again passed a bill that would allow for a charge of “endangerment with a controlled substance” when children are hurt by exposure to fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. As in 2023, 2024 and 2025, it received strong bipartisan support. 

Do the Democrats who run Olympia think Washingtonians are fools? It sure seems that way as we learn more about their plan to create a state income tax.

Allegations of fraud involving childcare funding and other government-subsidized programs elsewhere have people here concerned that something similar could be happening in Washington.

On the eighth day of Christmas, according to the popular holiday song, the gift was eight maids a-milking. 

Many in our state are probably too busy dealing with the effects of the latest “atmospheric river” to think about how winter will soon bring its own weather challenges.

State lawmakers need to be thinking about it, however. A stretch of sub-freezing temperatures could leave our region’s energy grid struggling to handle the soaring demand for electricity, especially if it’s a cold spell like we had in mid-January 2024. 

On the surface, a pair of murders in our state nearly two months ago don’t have anything in common except for each occurring in mid-October and resulting in the arrest of a young man.

One occurred in north Seattle, the other in Spokane — far from our corner of the state. Yet it’s a local prosecutor, Lewis County’s Jonathan Meyer, who sees two common denominators. 

Our state’s Democratic legislators have a long list of tax dreams. It’s safe to say a state income tax is at the top of their list, even though Washington voters have repeatedly said no to one over the past 90 years.

Even so, according to recent news reports, an income tax is a hot topic of discussion among Democrats and their political allies ahead of our 2026 legislative session, which is only about six weeks away.

Democrats have a new buzzword: “affordability.”

Many believe that word made the difference in helping socialist Zohran Mamdani and others on the political left to win elections back east. That means we should watch for Democrats in Olympia to jump with both feet onto the affordability bandwagon as well.

I have spoken many times about the importance of giving people a second chance to get on a better path. It usually comes up when the topic is our state’s management of juvenile offenders. I never had a reason to consider whether that should also extend to billionaires.

The line about “insanity” being defined as doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different result, is sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein. 

Taxpayers would rightfully be outraged if a state agency handed someone almost $350,000 in public funds to put toward the purchase of a $425,000 home, simply because of that person’s race and a family connection.

It’s easy to find examples of how years of one-party rule have made living in Washington less safe, less affordable and less beneficial for our children — but here’s one that doesn’t fall neatly into any of those three columns.

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, especially in our state, it’s how children benefit from attending school — socially, emotionally and academically.

Those behind the shutdown of the federal government had to know how their actions could be especially painful at a national level for low-income women with children, the elderly and our military women and men.