The Century Ballroom’s Hallie Kuperman with State Senator — and now Seattle mayoral hopeful — Ed Murray at a fundraiser earlier this year (Image: Century Ballroom)
Capitol Hill clubs are all like, “We told you so,” this weekend as Washington legislators finally pushed through a budget compromise that includes a break on the “opportunity to dance” tax.
Here’s the tally via the Seattle Nightlife & Music Association:
Unfortunately, venues like Neighbours won’t be getting a refund check anytime soon. Same deal with the folks at Century Ballroom who successfully rallied supporters in a series of fundraisers to pay off some $90,000 Olympia said it owed.
Legislators also handed out breaks to the beekeeper industry, nonprofit gun clubs who purchase clay targets, and renewable energy, if you’re keeping score at home.
Meanwhile, The Seattle Times reports on what many are saying is the biggest budget failure in Olympia:
Lawmakers adjourned their second overtime legislative session without Senate action on a $10 billion transportation package despite intense lobbying from business groups and Gov. Jay Inslee.
Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom said he and his colleagues were unified in their opposition to the plan this session. They plan to work over the coming months to help develop a proposal that lawmakers could consider next year, Tom said.
Au contraire: Not imposing a 10-1/2 cent increase in the gas tax does NOT look like failure to me. The voracious appetite for other people’s money in modern-day governance must be curbed.
then I suggest you stop using the roads, Fritz.
@Tomster and @JimS:
Jeez, Iyou guys, was just commenting on the spin in the headline. Chillax!
Fact: WA motorists 37.5 cents per gallon state tax, and another 18.4 cents federal. For those without calculators, that over 55 cents per gallon.
Fact: The “thirty dollar” tabs renewal cost me $128 this year, much of which goes to RTA and other non-road uses.
In my more than 35 years in WA, my experience is that every few years we’re told one more increase in the gas tax (or some other tax) is what is needed. Has it ever been anywhere even close? Not in many years.
Human nature is such that those who are spending other people’s money have no incentive to enforce any kind of financial discipline. They just always come back for more, because they can. I am glad that, for once, they did not succeed.
Correction: Jeez, you guys, I
I want to know YOUR secret Fritz. I want to know how I, too, can manage to pay for myself for every road, school, hospital, fire department, or other public infrastructure I use. You must be really smart.
Keep Senator Murray in mind when Metro endures a 17% cut in service next year due to the legislature’s failure to allow Metro to go to the ballot to preserve service. Murray couldn’t keep control of his own caucus…do you really want him to be mayor?
Huge win for Murray on the dance tax. I wonder who the music community will end up supporting – McGinn who worked with them a lot but couldn’t get the 24 hour liquor deal passed, or Murray who took one issue that effected a lot of club’s bottom line, and effectively passed it in a very messy Olympia.
As a general rule, the larger the tax increase asked for, the lesser chance it has of getting widespread support in the legislature. They knew this rule of politics, they gambled, and they lost the bet. Not really all that surprising.
[…] marked the first day Seattle bar and club owners were officially free from the shackles of the much maligned “dance tax,” thanks largely, many say, to Sen. Ed Murray. On Wednesday some of those owners rewarded the mayoral […]