Are we seeing the tide turn? Californians rejected tax hikes earlier this year, and this week the county council for liberal King County (Seattle) killed two proposed tax hikes.
First the Metropolitan King County Council's Budget and Fiscal Management Committee voted down a proposal by Councilmember Julia Patterson that would have asked voters to maintain public-health and human-service programs by raising the property tax on a $400,000 home about $40 a year.
Then County Executive Kurt Triplett's proposal to raise the sales tax by one-tenth of a percent languished when not a single council member moved for its adoption. That tax would have been split with cities and would have paid for criminal-justice, health-and-human-service programs.
"Enough. We've done enough tax raising," Councilmember Reagan Dunn said before the property-tax vote.
Got to love it.