One-party rule weakens WA constitution guardrails. How to restore them | Opinion
Late last month, thousands of retired Washington police officers and firefighters were forced to file a federal class-action lawsuit against their own state government to block a historic $4 billion raid on their hard-earned retirement funds. It was a shameful display, and a stark reminder that the 2026 legislative session in Olympia will be remembered not for the problems it solved, but for the fundamental guardrails it demolished.
Over the course of my time serving the people of the 2nd Legislative District, I have witnessed plenty of political disagreement. But what we saw this year from the Democrat majority wasn’t just typical partisan maneuvering. It was a disturbing, systematic effort to bypass the Washington State Constitution, strip away local authority, and treat the direct will of the people as a bureaucratic nuisance to be circumvented rather than a mandate to be followed.
We are witnessing a historic consolidation of power in our state capital that should alarm every single citizen, regardless of political affiliation. When a governing majority begins to view our state’s foundational document as a mere suggestion, the liberties of every Washingtonian are placed in jeopardy.
Nowhere was this arrogance more on display than in the majority’s blatant disregard for the citizen initiative process. Our state constitution clearly establishes the initiative as the first power reserved by the people. It is a vital safety valve designed to ensure that when the Legislature fails to act, or acts against the public interest, the voters have a direct say. The constitution explicitly requires that initiatives take precedence in the legislature over all other measures except appropriation bills.
Yet, this year, the Democrat majority flatly refused to even hold public hearings on two major citizen-backed initiatives. They didn’t just ignore these bills; they ignored the hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians who signed their names to petitions, demanding to be heard.
To make matters worse, we faced the introduction of Senate Bill 5973, the initiative killer. This dangerous proposal sought to bury citizen measures under a mountain of high costs and bureaucratic red tape, effectively neutralizing the people’s constitutional powers. While my Republican colleagues and I were ultimately able to defeat this measure, its very introduction reveals a toxic mindset in Olympia. Left-wing special interests actively tried to silence the voters because they fear the accountability that the initiative process brings.
But the assault on our constitutional norms didn’t stop there. We also witnessed a coordinated, top-down power grab aimed at stripping away the authority of your local communities.
Senate Bill 5974, known as the anti-sheriff bill, shifts oversight of locally elected sheriffs to a state-appointed commission in a direct violation of the home rule principle. You elect your local sheriff so they are accountable to you and your neighbors, not to a panel appointed by the governor’s office. Local communities have already secured a temporary injunction against this overreach, but the fact that it passed at all is telling.
Simultaneously, the majority passed Senate Bill 5929 and House Bill 2156, which significantly expand the authority of the State Attorney General’s office. It is a dangerous centralization of power, turning the AG’s office into a super-prosecutor that can override local decisions and interfere with county-level prosecutions.
To top it all off, the majority Democrats in the Legislature had to find a way to fund a historically high state budget. Beyond the LEOFF 1 pension raid, they rammed through Senate Bill 6346, implementing an unconstitutional 9.9% income tax.
Washingtonians are already fighting back. Multiple lawsuits are now challenging the income tax, which directly violates our state constitution’s 14th Amendment, its 137-year-old uniformity requirement, and nearly a century of legal precedent.
The tragedy is that citizens are now being forced to pay twice: first through higher taxes, and again through the legal fees required to sue their own government just to force it to follow the law.
We cannot simply wait for the courts to clean up Olympia’s messes. We need structural reform. That is why I am already preparing a comprehensive legislative package for the 2027 session to restore the constitutional guardrails that years of one-party rule have decimated.
To achieve this, my proposals will begin with the Pension Protection Act, which is a constitutional amendment to permanently wall off first-responder retirement funds so they can never be used as a political piggy bank for future budget raids. Next, I will introduce the Local Sovereignty Act, a measure to firmly establish that elected sheriffs answer exclusively to their constituents and the constitution, not to Olympia politicians. Finally, the Initiative Integrity Act will ensure that every initiative to the legislature receives a guaranteed public hearing, restoring the respect our constitution demands for the voice of the people.
The 2026 session proved that the legislative majority has lost its way. In 2027, my unwavering priority will be taking the power out of the hands of left-wing ideologues and Olympia politicians and returning it to the people of Washington, where it truly belongs.
Jim McCune represents Washington’s 2nd Legislative District in the State Senate.