Olympia’s majority Democrats showed again this year how their priorities are way off when it comes to the safety of the public.

The bills they rejected include two I had introduced that are aimed at protecting children. One would have held adults accountable for hurting young kids by exposing them to fentanyl or similar opioids. The second was to address the overcrowding that is endangering older children in custody at state juvenile offender facilities, like Green Hill School in Chehalis.

Who’s most responsible for the high cost of filling your fuel tank and paying for the energy your home needs?

Jay Inslee wants you to put the blame solely on the White House. In recent national media interviews, our state’s former chief executive has tried to connect high gas prices — and Washington’s are third-worst in the nation, at around $1.30 per gallon over the national average — to the conflict with Iran.

A recent state audit questioned whether Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families had properly spent federal funds to subsidize childcare. Between compliance and documentation concerns, the money involved could exceed $37 million.

It seemed strange that the governor’s office waited until late on a Sunday afternoon to publicly announce he would sign the new state income tax the following morning at the Capitol.

That’s very short notice considering the income tax bill was the most significant piece of legislation any of us has seen in decades, maybe longer. Gov. Bob Ferguson and other Democrats often called it historic. 

One of the many arguments Republicans made against the new state income tax is that it will lead to more capital flight. People will decide it’s time to flee from our state and take their financial assets with them.

Before the new state income tax passed by Democrats was even proposed as legislation, many of us who oppose such a tax predicted the supporters would engage in a game of bait-and-switch. They’d market an income tax as applying only to the wealthy, knowing all along the real goal would be to have everyone pay.

Do they think the people of Washington are fools, I asked — and now that the income tax is through the Legislature and awaiting Gov. Bob Ferguson’s formal endorsement, it’s clearer than ever that the answer is yes.

Sadly, we’ve now seen just how much damage 90 people can do to our state in 60 days.

The 90 people are Democrats: 59 state representatives, 30 state senators and Gov. Bob Ferguson. The 60 days went from Jan. 12 through March 12 — meaning this year’s legislative session.

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.