Washington Retail Association: Seeks to limit further increases in sales and B&O taxes and hold the fort on any new attempts to require mandatory cash backs on gift certificates or attempts to prevent use of supermarket club card information in legal proceedings or employment actions. It is fighting imposition of penalties for minimum-wage violations. The WRA is coming off a strong showing in 2004, it says: "WRA saved the retailing industry millions of dollars in the coming years in unemployment insurance taxes as a result of successfully passing Senate Bill 6097. The most dramatic and beneficial provision of the new law is the tax structure. . . . One new provision requires that the wages of all 12 months be averaged to calculate benefits. For the retailing industry this means a reduction of benefit cost of approximately $20 million a year."
Washington Software Alliance: Also seeks B&O reform, claiming the tax "is ill-suited to high technology companies because it taxes revenues, not incomes. . . . The B&O tax as it is currently written is a hindrance to start-up, high technology firms and should be revamped." Also opposes any taxing of manufacturing product as intellectual property. "As the creation of intellectual property is a by-product of most high technology firms, taxation of it would only keep such firms from operating in Washington State," says the WSA.
Christine Cox
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Washington State Grange: Continues to push for elimination of the 1987 tax reforms which adversely affected agriculture, it says. Supports a ban on sales tax on farm equipment sales between farmers and backs a constitutional cap for sales tax, B&O tax, property tax, and "possibly other existing taxes." The Grange also wants a slightly different kind of tort reform: "We support placing limitations on state and federally funded indigent legal services groups who, in their efforts to enforce migrant labor laws, place discriminatory hardships on growers who have unknowingly violated unrealistic provisions of the law." P.S. "We believe employers should not be held responsible for determining their workers' citizenship status."
None of these agendas is a slam dunk. There are now more than 1,000 lobbyists in Olympia, and competition for influence from other organizations, such as unions, has heated up. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was last year's legislative party crasher, getting a surprising—and unanimous—legislative OK for a state contract with 26,000 home health care workers by, in the words of one of its lobbyists, "kicking up some dust." SEIU tactics included running attack ads, manning phone banks, and organizing marches on the capital. The Washington Education Association has used similar strategies to forward its agenda. But whether it's Mom and Pop or the Seahawks at the door, lawmakers do grow weary of high-pressure lobbying. "They forget," laments Rep. Darlene Fairley, D–Lake Forest Park, that "we're real people." Dust kickers take note. Bring flowers.
randerson@seattleweekly.com
