Religious leaders are regular during the legislative session, weighing in mostly on matters that concern social services to members of their congregations.

When I first started covering the Legislature in 1990, the religious leaders would hold a news conference and they often were referred to as the "God Squad," partly because of the rhyme, mostly because of their work.

After seeing how the Legislature proposes to balance the state budget, the ministers, rabbis and priests have taken their stand: "To live up to our moral responsibility for the common good, we must find ways to raise additional revenues," they said.

Open Letter on the Need for Revenue from Religious Leaders

What kind of state do we want to live in?

We believe all caring citizens want to live in a state where life’s basic necessities are met.

As religious leaders of Washington State we call upon our legislators to face the daunting challenge of balancing the state budget, with its $9 billion revenue shortfall, with courage and compassion. This cannot be accomplished without increasing revenues.

The massive budget cuts proposed in the Governor, House and Senate budgets devastate life line services such as childcare, public health, health care for kids and adults, housing and care for seniors. It denies opportunities for a quality public education essential for our children’s future. Public services are more important than ever when families lose jobs, lose healthcare and are otherwise economically stressed. To live up to our moral responsibility for the common good, we must find ways to raise additional revenues.

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At one time Simpson Tacoma Craft, a pulp mill on Commencement Bay, pictured June 4, 1997, was a major source of air pollution in Tacoma, Wash. But that is no longer the case. Smoke stacks which once spewed black smoke are much cleaner now due to advanced technology in the stacks. (AP Photo/Seattle Post intelligencer, Meryl Schenker)

The Tacoma City Council is poised to appoint 11 people to the newly created Sustainable Tacoma Commission on Climate Change.

Commission members will be charged with overseeing the implementation of a plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A 25-member task force came up with the strategies, which included creation of a city Office of Sustainability.

The council approved creation of both the new office and commission in October.

Tacoma is currently advertising of a manager of the new office, which will report to the City Manager.

The manager will act as the city's staff support for the 11-member commission, said Alisa O'Hanlon, government relations coordinator.

Council members are expected to approve appointment of the commission members at Tuesday's business meeting.

The city hopes to have the manager of the Office of Sustainability on the job by May, O'Hanlon said.

The proposed commission members include:

For a one-year term: Joanne Buselmeier, Tony Warfield and Bill Anderson.

For two-year terms: Dr. Jane Moore, Elaine Ott, Ken Schmidt, and Bliss Moore.

For three-year terms: Dale Anderson, Louise Bray, Philip Coughlan, and James Gawel.

It's not good form for a reporter to say "I was the last to know," but it's true this time.

Apparently, the so-call 'baby books' -- which show pictures of all 147 legislators and telephone numbers and committee assignments -- have been out about 3 weeks. So most of you already know this.

I guess that just goes to show how much I've migrated to on-line. I almost never get over to the Bill Room anymore.

First copies are free. More copies of the pictorial will cost you $2.50 and copies of the telephone directory will cost $1.50.

That's what state Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, said today at a noon-hour news conference to elaborate on his proposal to borrow $3 billion and use the money to fix up public schools, colleges and make many of them, plus state agency buildings, more energy efficient.

Oh yeah. And it would create 90,000 jobs for a year, or more likely 45,000 a year in 2010 and another 45,000 in 2011.

More than $2 billion would be given to the state's 296 school districts, $100,000 each at a minimum -- plus more based on student count. Tacoma, for instance, would get $55 million for energy projects. Federal Way and Puyallup school districts would get about $42 million apiece.

Here is the full list of money for each school district.

Dunshee compared it to the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s because of its job-creation and its focus on public buildings.

Right now, there is no tax source to make payments on the money that Dunshee wants the state to borrow. He said he's waiting for the folks who are writing the operating budget to decide on what taxes they might want to offset some cuts to the operating budget. If they use the sales tax, then he probably would use sin taxes -- cigarettes, liquor, etc.

Sin taxes don't raise enough money for over a 2-year period to help out the operating budget -- say $90 million from a $1-per-pack increase in cigarette taxes -- because they want somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion over two years.

But sin taxes would provide enough money to make payments on the 20-year $3 billion loans, he said. Dunshee is chairman of the House Capital Budget Committee.

Washington State Treasurer Jim McIntire threw cold water on Dunshee's proposal, which is embodied in House Bill 2334.

“The $3 billion of added debt called for in HB 2334 is too much,” McIntire said. “It would threaten our credit rating and would affect the rest of our investments in transportation and public infrastructure.

"The maximum (the state should borrow) would be $1 billion -- and that would be pushing it," McIntire said.

The state already borrows about $4 billion every two years, mostly for highway projects and K-12 and college buildings, he said. To add $3 billion to that probably would risk a lower credit rating for the state, which means Washington would be paying a higher interest rate, not only on the $3 billion of new loans, but also the other $4 billion the state would be borrowing, he said.

Dunshee said he expected that.

"There's going to be some consternation about doing something of this size, but we need the jobs," he said.

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Oh, you probably thought I was talking about Washington's lawmakers.

No. No.

Actually, those are some of the actions taken by the California Legislature to almost balance its own budget, which had a $42 billion gap between spending and taxes.

It was featured in State Legislatures magazine.

The sales tax would go up to almost 10 percent in some counties.

The car tax will almost double.

Non-violent inmates will get out of prison and won't be supervised.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The Washington Policy Center, not to be confused with the Washington Budget and Policy Center, (but it will be, anyway) took out a full-page ad in our sister paper. It's a letter signed by 31 economists who say that raising taxes WILL hurt the economy.

This is intended to rebut assertions by the "Budget and Policy" folks who said cutting spending will do more harm. (But they didn't take out an ad!)

So, it's the "Policy" vs. the "Budget and Policy" people, going head to head. I can't remember the numbers, but I think they both have 30-some economists on their side. Here's the post I did in mid-February. Although it says the letter was signed by only 22 economists, they picked up several more later on.

What's a person supposed to believe?

Here's the ad that ran in the Olympian.

At least, it will be if the House goes along with a Senate proposal to remove the "sunset" date on the tire fee.

The "sunset" date is when a tax is supposed to expire. This one was supposed to go away on June 30, 2010. SB 5976, passed by the Senate, gets rid of that expiration date and keeps the fee in place permanently. It passed the Senate 36-11, a supermajority.

The first $1 million each year will go to clean up tire piles, the rest will be used for highway preservation projects. That fee raises about $4 million a year.

The House Transportation Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill today at 1:30 p.m.

You may recall that some taxes that were supposed to expire, the ones used to build the Seahawk stadium and Mariners ballpark, now appear headed for an indefinite extension.

Here is the bill report on Senate Bill 5976.

The fee did expire once, but lawmakers brought it back in 2002.