Initiative fee increase protects process, taxpayers

There isn’t much out there that for a $5 bill in 1913 you could have gotten 101 years later for the same half a sawbuck. As of March 9, that list got even shorter.

Earlier this month, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs announced that the fee his office charges to file initiatives to the Legislature had increased — from the $5 that has been charged since the initiative process was established in a 1912 state constitutional amendment — to an inflation-adjusted $156.

For those in the practice — or business — of filing initiatives to get them before the Legislature or the voters, that represents a cumulative price change of nearly 30,035 percent, perhaps putting the current U.S. inflation rate of 3.15 percent into perspective.

“The expenses generated in multiple state agencies for processing each and every filing of a potential ballot measure are not what they used to be in 1913, and our fee structure must reflect that,” Hobbs said in a March 8 press release, calling the increase an overdue recognition of inflation.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-initiative-fee-increase-protects-process-taxpayers/



Narcissistic asshole taking a selfie.