John Braun commentary: Tax supporters continue an Olympia trend — stifle the opposition
Saturday, April 4, 2026
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.
The timing makes more sense if the idea was to stifle protesters. Because when the appointed hour arrived March 30, the only people in the camera shots were cheering sign-wavers and select Democrats clustered around the governor as he signed Senate Bill 6346 and declared the tax to be “the right policy.”
But if the governor truly believes the income tax is right for our state, why would he go along with blocking the people’s constitutional right to a referendum on the bill?
Ferguson presented himself as a defender of the constitution when campaigning for chief executive. He could have demanded that the so-called “necessity clause,” which prevents a referendum, be stripped out of SB 6346 before he would support it. That wouldn’t have changed the tax policy itself, but the governor didn’t act.
Was he worried the people might not share his view about this historic legislation? Why would he oppose having a referendum on this November’s general election ballot, when the income tax isn’t scheduled for collection until April 2029?
These same questions could be put to SB 6346’s prime sponsor. Prior to introducing the bill, he publicly cited independent and partisan polling that showed a majority of respondents indicating support for taxing high earners.
This Democratic leader also claimed the defeat of 2024’s Initiative 2109, to repeal the capital gains income tax, was more proof that the income tax had strong public support.
When the legislation was filed, however, the necessity clause was there: “The tax imposed in this act is necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions.”
This sentence is old and new at the same time. It’s derived from a passage in the state constitution but didn’t appear in legislation until 2021, in the bill creating the income tax on capital gains. Democrats also put it in this past year’s Senate Bill 5814, which authorized a multibillion-dollar expansion of the sales tax.
Unlike its wordier sibling, the “emergency clause” — which is notorious for being misused but can have a legitimate purpose — the necessity clause seems to have just one role: stifle opposition by denying the people their constitutional right of referendum.
Republicans tried to remove this anti-referendum wording from SB 6436. We also tried to require the income tax to be adopted as a constitutional amendment — another way to get to a public vote. Our amendments were rejected.
Unfortunately, tailoring legislation to stifle dissent is nothing new in Olympia. The natural gas ban in 2023’s HB 1589 is among the many examples of how the emergency clause has been abused to deny the people their right of referendum.
In 2025, 47 bills containing the emergency clause were approved. Another 26 emergency clause bills were sent to the governor this year, including the anti-sheriff bill (Senate Bill 5974) and a few other pieces of legislation that seem to be overreactions to the change of administration in Washington, D.C.
I can think of just one reason why someone would want SB 5974, a bill about the eligibility standards for sheriffs, to take effect as soon as it was signed April 1 instead of waiting until June 11, like most of the bills passed this session. It has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with preventing a public vote.
But let’s get back to the income tax, and why someone would want to shield an allegedly popular bill from a referendum. The simplest conclusion is that the common fate of the 10 previous income tax proposals offered over the past 90-plus years undermined the courage of any convictions the supporters may have.
To put it a different way, they saw the writing on the wall and decided the best route was to stifle the opposition with 20 words — the necessity clause.
One of the Republican victories this session was the derailing of Senate Bill 5973, which we referred to as the “initiative killer” bill. It’s a terrible piece of policy, as the nickname suggests, yet claimed to be about promoting “the integrity and proper functioning of the initiative and referendum process.”
Here’s an idea to try instead: stop including anti-referendum language in bills, allow the process to function as Article II of the state constitution intends, and let democracy prevail. That’s how we do better.
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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.