REDMOND, WA – Today, Let’s Go Washington (LGW) announced it is formally challenging the Attorney General’s recently released Public Investment Impact Disclosure (PIID) for I-645. LGW’s legal counsel argues that the AG’s disclosure misrepresents the impacts of repealing the income tax because a repeal would increase state funding in the current budget, rather than decrease it, as the AG suggests. Additionally, the PIID misstates the top three categories of state services funded by the general fund in the current state budget. The PIID as currently written is inaccurate and would mislead voters.
The PIID isn’t meant to speculate about what might happen down the road, it’s supposed to tell voters what a law actually does to the budget in the current budget. But this tax doesn’t start collecting until 2029. Not a single dollar has been collected yet, so it cannot decrease funding.
“You can’t cut money that doesn’t exist. The Attorney General’s PIID is not just misleading; it’s factually incorrect,” said Brian Heywood, founder of Let’s Go Washington. “I-645 does not decrease funding at all in the current budget cycle, in fact it increases funding by returning millions of taxpayer dollars that would’ve been spent setting up an income tax bureaucracy and defending an unconstitutional income tax against legal challenges.“
The challenge argues that the PIID relies on speculation rather than the actual effect of I-645 as the budget is currently enacted. The AG repeatedly assumes potential future tax collections, potential future legislative spending decisions, and potential future budget allocations. The PIID is specifically meant to give voters context for actual effect, not potential effect.
“When deciding whether I-645 would increase or decrease funding, the current PIID incorrectly relies on speculation rather than the actual effect of I-645,” said Heywood.
Additionally, the PIID misstates the top three categories of state services funded by the general fund in the current state budget. The categories as written in the current PIID are misleading in that they both over and understate the State’s top spending in the 2025-2027 operating budget, as supplemented in 2026. The PIID should be revised as follows:
“This measure would increase funding for the 2026-2027 state general fund, which primary investments are medical assistance-programs, public instruction, and higher education.”
Any other description would be inaccurate and mislead voters