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>> Tom Layson: With the 2020 legislative session in the rear view mirror, the mid-term elections now move into focus with the entire Washington State House up for grabs.

Tonight, Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins joins us to talk about the just-completed session, and her perspective on the issues going forward.

Next on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] Washington Democrats are in full control of state government, and they have been for years now.

One might make the argument that having the so-called trifecta did not result in a quick swing toward the realization of the progressive agenda.

But the momentum is definitely changed now, with a continued uptick in the state budget, and spending on the social safety net, climate change, homelessness, and just about every other category of need.

So it's in that environment that Tacoma's Laurie Jinkins presides as the Speaker of the House.

Speaker Jinkins, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

Great to have an in-person discussion.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

Good to be here.

>> Tom Layson: It's been a while.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Good to be here.

>> Tom Layson: Absolutely.

Wanted to talk to you about a few news items, the most recent one, and you've been speaking about this in social media and whatnot, is the flag controversy at Pierce County buildings.

It's a hard one.

And I've been involved in that a little bit after 9/11 with lapel pins.

Why isn't the best policy just to say the American flag, and we're going to end it there, folks.

Take your political battles to Facebook or Twitter, not here?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

Well, I don't think that actually acknowledging a community within the larger community is a controversial or a political issue, right?

So flying a flag to acknowledge that the LGBTQ community, I think is kind of a standard practice.

Tacoma's been doing it for a long time.

Lots of other cities and communities do it.

And to treat it like a controversy when it's actually not a controversy, it's just affirming a community's presence here, seems odd.

Seems odd to me.

>> Tom Layson: Counterargument.

We also have a community here of neo-Nazis.

What happens when they want to fly their flag?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes, well I think that there was recently a court ruling which really says there should be a policy -- a governmental entity should have a policy about what it says and when, right?

That would be considered hate speech, most likely.

And so, I would assume that the county council's policy that they adopted would not allow that.

And I think it was good for the -- you know, we just had a Supreme Court decision that said county councils should adopt a policy around this.

I think now this seems to be a little bit of an argument about who has the power to legislate, the county council or the executive?

Usually it's the county council or the legislature for us, that has the ability to legislate.

And then the governor or the county exec has executive powers to implement.

>> Tom Layson: Very good arguing on the hate speech part.

I shouldn't have asked that to a lawyer, should I have [inaudible]?

You found the crucial argument.

>> Speaker Jinkins: I'm still enough of a lawyer to be dangerous, Tom.

>> Tom Layson: Abortion, it's really not a local issue here, is it?

I mean it's codified.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I mean, I think one of the things I would say is it is true that, you know, in 1991 Washington State voters enacted basically Roe versus Wade into law.

A legislature at any point can overturn that, and I was particularly struck for example by the minority leader in the Senate, the Republican leader here in Washington State saying, well listen, Washington doesn't have to worry about it, because it's Democrats that are in control.

And then he turned around to argue, but Republicans want to be in control.

You know, we've had no fewer than 40 bills over the last four years filed in Washington State by Republican lawmakers trying to restrict a woman's -- just restricting a woman's right to choose.

We had a bill this year that expanded the healthcare providers who can provide abortion services.

Not a single Republican voted for that bill.

So I do think there is risk here in Washington State.

It is -- I feel really good about the voters and where the voters stand.

But we really need to be paying attention to who's in control of the legislature.

>> Tom Layson: I was going to just ask you, and you again lawyered right into the answer.

Do you think that's a problem with the electorate, and generally a little more conservative people here in Washington State?

Or do you think it's a problem with Republican Party politics and who's running the party?

>> Speaker Jinkins: I mean, I'm very external to that, right, environment.

My guess is that it's some of both, right?

It's driven by people who are on extreme end on this topic, who are very active in electoral politics in the Republican party.

But you know, when I actually came into the legislature, we actually had some pro-choice Republicans.

We don't appear to have any anymore, even though it's really clear that state-wide, in a bi-partisan way, both Republicans and Democrats support a woman's right to have control over her body and her right to choose.

>> Tom Layson: Here's the cynic in me coming out.

Democrats are sweating crime, sweating the economy, the polling showed those were issues.

Here comes abortion and a woman's right to choose.

Whew, boy.

Save the midterms, possibly save the Washington State House, although I don't think there was a balance of power in jeopardy there, but still.

Was it fortuitous that this came about as a political issue in this election year?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I get -- one, we kind of will wait to see, but overall Tom, women's lives are not a political issue.

Not a political issue at all.

It may -- there are going to be a thousand issues that come up between now and election day in November.

This is going to be a big one, and it is important because it is about a woman's right to control her own body.

>> Tom Layson: It certainly [inaudible].

>> Speaker Jinkins: And if it has political implications, then it does.

But what's most important to me, and to my caucus is to make sure that we are protecting that right, and we do that by making sure we maintain a majority.

>> Tom Layson: Expanding on the abortion topic, and looking at a lot of topics, from gun control, you name it, all the controversial ones.

I really get the sense, and you know, this isn't breaking news.

But we have talked about two Washingtons for a while: rural red and urban blue.

And I really get the sense that we're having a discussion about two Americas almost now.

States that, from abortion to other things that are -- you live in a substantially different place in this country if you live in different states.

Is that a good thing?

A bad thing?

Does that concern you?

What's the big picture there?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I mean, you know, it's hard because there's not clear answers to me about any of these questions, right?

There are some good things that different states address in different ways, but again when you think about abortion rights, reproductive health rights, and things like marriage equality, which you know, if the court decision ends up being very close to what was issued, it's basically going to say that there's virtually no right to privacy.

Which in the country, which is what all kinds of other Supreme Court decisions have been based on.

You know, the Loving case, interracial marriage.

Same gender couples marrying.

All of those are at risk.

So you can't have a country where people are traveling back and forth between states where they're gaining and losing rights depending on what arbitrary line they cross.

There are certainly, you know, reasons to have -- >> Tom Layson: Firearms advocates would love to hear you say that.

They would love a national carry permit.

They would love a lot of those features.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I mean, that -- yes.

It would be better, I think, if we had concealed carry permits that were handled the same way across the county.

Might not be the way that -- I might advocate for a way others wouldn't agree with as much.

I think Washington's policies on firearms are extraordinarily good and are helpful to the people in this state.

But you know, there's certainly local issues that should be governed by the state.

But as we become more and more of a state that you can travel anywhere in less than a day, that does argue for trying to have some standardization.

It's interesting, I spent a lot of my career licensing healthcare providers.

And that's always been a state's rights issue.

And it makes sense in the 1800s where when you were a physician in Washington State, you probably weren't going anywhere else, likely, to be a physician.

Now people have practices in multiple states and things like that.

And so not having a national standard on that seems challenging.

>> Tom Layson: This conversation about two Washingtons, two Americas feeds well into this question, having just come out of the legislative session.

As Speaker, I asked minority leader J.T.

Wilcox this question, and I want to ask you as well, give you the same opportunity.

What's the beef?

What's the basic critique of not kooky, but mainline conservatism here in Washington State?

People who want to spend less, be a little more fiscally conservative.

Not provide wraparound cradle-to-grave services for everybody, no matter what.

They're just a little more -- what is the critique of that?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well I think, you know, one of the primary differences actually, it isn't what we want in the end, right?

Wanting to serve the people of the state, and wanting us to have a healthy economy and healthy families and healthy communities I think is a shared goal.

It's really about how do you get that, right?

>> Tom Layson: J.T.

said the exact same thing.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Really?

>> Tom Layson: Which is encouraging.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Hunh.

Yes.

So I mean, we taken different approaches.

I'll just give you an example of this last session during the two years of the pandemic.

Some on the conservative side would argue that we should do broad-based tax relief for folks.

But what we decided to do was targeted tax relief, so -- right?

Bring down the BNO taxes for our small business community.

So we're going to end up with 125,000 small businesses, local main street businesses in Washington, that will either not even have to file for BNO taxes or their BNO taxes will be highly reduced.

But we also have been a state where the wealthy hasn't been paying their fair share to make the state a health state.

And so we didn't want to do things that were just going to benefit the most wealthy.

Instead we wanted to invest in things like childcare, where both our families and our business community were telling us that they were being damaged.

I mean, even you know, the Washington Association of Business a couple of years ago did a study that said their small businesses were losing $2 billion a year, because of the shortage of childcare.

And how it damaged workforce.

And we hear this from families all the time.

So our focus is really more on, rather than broad-based tax relief in a really inequitable state in terms of taxation, to use our dollars to invest in strengthening families, and then to do targeted tax relief.

So those are different approaches.

>> Tom Layson: So here's the big question then, and I ask this on behalf of the conservatives in the state who trot income tax out as the bogeyman a lot.

Is there an appetite for an income tax in this state?

Can it happen, and are you -- would you like to make it happen?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I don't think there's much of an income -- appetite for income tax.

But I think we will see -- we will see.

We have a tax structure workgroup.

It's bipartisan, bicameral that's been working for two years.

Been working very well, and been all over the state getting feedback from people.

I do think one of the things there's starting to be more interest in, for example, this goes back to our business and operations tax, right?

Every business is taxed on their gross revenue.

>> Tom Layson: Gross, yes.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Right?

And that is because a net revenue might be considered an income tax.

But that would be much fairer.

When you have a start-up business, you don't make money for a while.

You might bring in a lot of gross revenue, but you are not actually making a profit.

And so looking at a margins tax, some sort of margins tax I think may be of interest to our small business community.

>> Tom Layson: And I hear everybody going, aha!

I can hear them out there, right now.

Aha!

It is an income tax.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

Well, I mean -- right?

And we'll see.

We'll have to see, and we'll see what the tax structure workgroup says.

And again, it's worked really well in a -- good bipartisan partnerships there, and bicameral.

House and Senate.

So I'd really like to wait and see what they have to say, because I think that Washington is ripe for all kinds of tax reform.

I don't think the general public at this point, that anything that I've seen would say any -- there are people who want an income tax.

>> Tom Layson: Sure.

>> Speaker Jinkins: But I don't think there's a big public groundswell for that.

So let's see what the tax structure workgroup says, what options they present to us, and I think we'll go from there.

>> Tom Layson: I put the revenue before the budget discussion, but -- I'm not a lawmaker, so I can do that.

Is spending sustainable?

You're looking at a $64 billion budget, a record supplemental.

And when I go in and look at things like taxation per capita, Washington State's typically been on-trend, but we're starting to gap that now.

That's the alligator mouth.

We're starting to come above trend.

Is our spending sustainable?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I mean, I think one of the things we did this biennium, because we had so much federal money flowing in, is when you look at our supplemental budget, we certainly made more one-time investments, because we knew that that federal money wasn't coming back.

So when we invested half-a-billion dollars in this supplemental budget, a big dollar amount in housing, that was one-time only money.

And it's really -- that kind of one-time only money is very ripe for spending on, like, construction of housing.

Or we invested $2 billion in our transportation package.

Again, that's to build our transportation system, and really more to maintain it, because that's how we focused there.

So we worked hard, Tom, I think to not, I guess, to not spend money that wasn't ongoing money on ongoing things.

>> Tom Layson: So you don't -- >> Speaker Jinkins: But to still try and -- >> Tom Layson: You don't have to turn around cancel programs.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Right.

Right.

But we still wanted to make sure we were helping Washingtonians on the housing side, on the transportation side.

On other one-time dollars.

>> Tom Layson: Republicans wanted a property tax refund, or a tax holiday, on gases -- or on fuel, and to see some of that money put back into Washington's, Washingtonians' pockets.

And I would say that's an illustrative piece of some of that gap.

Investing with the hope of a payoff, versus let's have some of that money and give it back to taxpayers.

I see that as a pretty stark philosophical difference there between the progressive agenda, and the conservative agenda in the state.

I don't think that's wrong.

I think it's a healthy debate.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I mean, I think that's a philosophical perspective on it.

But just on the, like, just on the issue of gas tax, for example, the research nationally says that you give a holiday on gas tax, that is like a sponge that petroleum companies soak up.

It doesn't have a downward effect on gas prices.

In the end, petroleum companies end up earning more.

And I don't think that's what Washingtonians want.

The other thing is -- >> Tom Layson: They eat that tax break.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Right.

The other thing is, you know, a big part of what's causing this is what's going on in Ukraine.

And I am not getting in bed with Vladimir Putin.

We're not doing that in Washington State.

We are not going to kind of cave in to the pressures that he's putting.

We are, I think -- and I think Washingtonians generally -- are in favor of putting pressure on Russia, and putting pressure on him to stop this kind of activity that he has going on in Ukraine.

>> Tom Layson: As a speaker, you're in a unique option I think to address this.

We've talked a little bit about the two Washingtons, the philosophical differences on budget and spending, and that provides a nice entree to a question about governance.

It's great to be a Democrat in Washington State.

You always win.

So what's not to love?

From however a policy perspective, a checks and balances perspective, a how would you run a company perspective, an educational perspective about having differing viewpoints, and getting the best ideas, and to make the best widget, is it the best form of government we could have?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

Well, I mean -- >> Tom Layson: That was easy, wasn't it?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, if you're talking about form of government, yes.

This is, you know, to have -- >> Tom Layson: I mean one-party control.

>> Speaker Jinkins: One-party control?

I think that, you know, one, this is what the voters in Washington have chosen, and this year, you know, we will see about that.

>> Tom Layson: No denying that.

>> Speaker Jinkins: But, you know, I'll say a few things.

One is that the Democratic party is not monolithic.

We have lots of diversity of opinion within our caucus, and within the party.

So there is a lot of diversity there.

And people say rural and, you know, Democrats are urban; Republicans rural.

I was just up in northwestern Washington, our son is going to college up there.

You know, we have members representing a couple of districts up there that are highly rural districts.

We have Democratic members who represent huge portions of the Olympic peninsula that are Democratic members.

So we do have a diversity within our caucus.

The other things is, I think what we try to do whenever we can, and work very hard to do, is to get bipartisan input on all of our legislation.

I mean, if you look this last session 95%, literally 95% of the bills that went off the floor of the House, wide bipartisan support for them.

They're always going to be differences, and that's what's going to get kind of the most attention But generally we actually do work in a really bipartisan way.

I think the last thing that I'll just say, though, about governance during these pandemic times, I was elected Speaker and had 40 days of Speaker before the first coronavirus cases hit Washington State.

>> Tom Layson: I remember we talked to you just before.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

>> Tom Layson: Yes [inaudible].

>> Speaker Jinkins: You know?

And so this has consumed my Speakership, and the last two legislative years.

I recognized going into this that my job was to govern.

And it was to make the best decisions that I could for the operations of the House, and the people of this state.

It's really easy to say no to things when you're in the legislature.

That's the easiest thing to do.

The hardest thing to do is to work hard and to find a way to get to yes on really difficult, challenging things where there may be differences of opinion amongst your electorate on those.

>> Tom Layson: The art of the possible, right?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

And I think we've done a really good job of that.

>> Tom Layson: I want to bring it in, closer to home a little bit.

You being from Tacoma, and us, our licensee and our station being here in Tacoma, we serve both, as you do, all of western Washington in our case, but also our home base is here.

Big concern, and in fact, I even saw a tease for a news program tonight, one of the Seattle stations coming down and doing a big blowout on crime in Pierce County, because it's now become newsworthy.

Concerned about that?

About what you're seeing happen in Tacoma and Pierce County?

What are your thoughts on solutions, or are we just going to have to suffer the same fate as the rest of the country, because everybody's experiencing this.

What -- >> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

>> Tom Layson: How should we think about this?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

I think, Tom, that that is one of the biggest challenges that we have right now.

And there are so many factors at play here.

I think this is a good point that you're making, that we are not an exception.

So we have to think about what's going on nationally.

And one of the challenging things is when you think about cause, we can only usually understand that in retrospect.

Well, we need to do things right now.

So yes, we're very focused on that.

You know, let me just give you an example of kind of I think one of the smart ways we're trying to address some of the criminal activity we see.

We had a bill this session on catalytic converter theft.

And every neighborhood that I represent, I've heard from people this is a big issue.

Well, catalytic converter theft has always been a criminal -- it's a crime to do that, right?

So what would our, historically what would our choice be?

Well, let's make it more of a crime.

Well, all of the research out there says that is not going to stop it.

So what is another thing that we can do?

We looked at really some national approaches, and what we did was looked at the third-party market, right?

And so if you drive down demand, why is somebody going to do that?

So now, starting this year after legislation from Representative Ryu this year, if you're a third-party purchaser, you're going to have to verify that the catalytic converter you're buying comes from a car that the person selling it to you owns.

Or you're going to have criminal liability.

And then, we've also created a taskforce of law enforcement officials and others to identify other ways that we can, you know, bring down catalytic converter theft.

Now I'm not saying all the crime we're facing is that.

But what I'm saying is, we're trying to do really smart engagement on creating crimes, and how to address crimes as a way to try to move forward on some of these things.

>> Tom Layson: Side piece on that.

Did Defund Police and what you might kind of call it, and anti-cop vibe over the course of the last couple of years go too far?

Is part of this, does it lie at that doorstep a little bit?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Well, I guess I would just say, like, for us in state government, like the Defund Police thing was never a real thing.

That was political rhetoric.

I mean, just this year, and last year -- >> Tom Layson: But cops who quit hear it.

>> Speaker Jinkins: They hear it, but both years -- >> Tom Layson: And they quit.

>> Speaker Jinkins: Both years, Washington State increased its funding for law enforcement.

This year it was probably more than $20 million between training to recruit and train law enforcement officers, and also on retention, you know, related to pensions and things like that.

So we did a lot of things there, so I think it's hard for people when they hear that kind of political rhetoric out there, to go beneath and say is that really true?

Not really true in terms of what the legislature is doing.

But I would say that, you know, we passed a number of -- we passed, I don't know, 12 or 13 bills last session.

This year we came back and we had four kind of adjustments that we wanted to make.

>> Tom Layson: Yes [inaudible].

>> Speaker Jinkins: Three of which we made.

So you know, one was related to -- and in both years we worked heavily with the law enforcement community with families who've been affected by law enforcement violence, and had lost family members.

And so one of the things that was missed was we wanted, last year for law enforcement to use less lethal weapons.

Well, we accidentally had something in a bill that prohibited them from shooting bean bags as opposed to bullets.

You know?

And that was something that neither the law enforcement folks that we talked to, nor anyone, like -- it wasn't until after the bill was implemented that people were like, oh.

We missed this.

So we went back and fixed that.

We also went back, we had some members of the law enforcement community said that they thought one of the bills that we had passed prohibited them from their community care taking calls, where we had someone who was maybe in a behavioral health crisis, and it prohibited them from putting hands on somebody to try and help get them into an ambulance.

Now the AG's office said no, the law doesn't do that.

But we're like, hey, if you need clarification about this, we'll do that.

We also defined what the use of force was for police, because they're lots of [inaudible].

>> Tom Layson: That was another big one, yes.

>> Speaker Jinkins: And so I think the vehicular pursuits bill is the one bill that we weren't able to get to.

And that's a challenging issue, because again, all the data out there says when there's high-speed pursuits, it's very dangerous to law -- I mean, we had two law enforcement officers die in them.

>> Tom Layson: And civilians.

Yes.

>> Speaker Jinkins: And civilians.

We have a member on the Senate who had a family member who died in a pursuit, and was a civilian I think.

So that'll be stuff that we will continue to work on.

But in the end, Tom, our goal is to make sure that law enforcement has the tools that they need to protect the community, and protect the public.

And is also held accountable when trust is violated.

And that's the balance we're always trying to achieve, and we'll keep on working on that.

>> Tom Layson: Finding the balance.

Definitely a theme, isn't it?

>> Speaker Jinkins: Yes.

It really is.

And now that I've taken on this speaker role, it's even more so than it was as a member.

So it's a challenging piece of work.

[ Music ] >> Tom Layson: Our thanks to Speaker Jinkins for coming to Northwest Now.

Spending $64 billion annually to grow the safety net, implement aggressive climate action, and trying to solve persistent problems with mental health, the achievement gap, and housing is how the Democrats are exercising their winning political power.

The bottom line?

It'll be interesting to see whether it's all sustainable in the long run, and whether a new source of revenue will eventually have to be found to make it all stick.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again, or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web at kbtc.org and be sure to follow us on Twitter at NorthwestNow.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

[ Music ]