I-791 foes smoke out Big Tobacco

OLYMPIA — Opponents of an initiative to strengthen the state's spending limit are trying to scare off potential supporters by tying them to one of the measure's biggest backers: tobacco giant Philip Morris.

Butt Out of Washington, a coalition of labor unions, education groups and health-care organizations, ran full-page newspaper ads this week painting Initiative 791 as a sinister attempt by Big Tobacco to attract young smokers.

"They've found a new way to target our children," the ads proclaimed.

Andy Grow, a paid spokesman for the opposition campaign, said the ads were aimed mainly at businesses and groups that might consider donating money to the I-791 campaign, which is struggling to get enough voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot.

"We're trying to help people understand that if they get in bed with Philip Morris, they are going to be painted with that same brush," Grow said.

I-791 supporters called the ads a deceptive attack funded mostly by groups with a vested interest in keeping state spending unfettered.

"I guess they're a little nervous that they're not going to be able to tax people the way they want to," said Dino Rossi, the ranking Republican on the state Senate Ways and Means Committee and one of I-791's initial backers.

The state's spending limit, approved as Initiative 601 in 1993, has been weakened through the years in a series of legislative changes. Earlier this year, for instance, lawmakers voted to suspend portions of the spending limit that required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes or spend emergency reserves.

That prompted Rossi and others to push for a broader, tougher spending limit.

Sponsors have until July 5 to collect 197,734 signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot. Lance Henderson, manager of the Save Our Spending Limits campaign, would not say how many signatures had been gathered but added, "It's going to go down to the wire."

Initiative 791 Filed in March, I-791 would restore the two-thirds vote of the Legislature for state tax increases and reserve spending. It would also expand the spending limit that voters approved in 1993 as Initiative 601, which tied general-fund spending to population and inflation, to hundreds of other state accounts. In recent years, lawmakers have sidestepped the limit by transferring money out of the general fund.

The group has not been able to raise cash needed to hire paid signature gatherers, a tactic used by most successful petition drives during the past decade.

When the initiative was filed, sponsors expected big financial support from businesses. But Rossi, who has been trying to persuade businesses to get on board, acknowledged it hasn't gone as well as hoped.

"The business community is pretty well sorting itself out into the ones that don't want to be taxed more and those that don't mind," Rossi said.

As of last week, the group had raised about $70,000, according to reports filed with the state Public Disclosure Commission. None of the state's biggest corporations — such as Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser — had contributed.

By contrast, backers of Referendum 51, which calls for a statewide gas-tax increase to fund transportation projects, had raised nearly $500,000.

I-791 foes said the measure is too far-reaching and could cause serious money shortages for programs funded outside the general fund. For instance, the stricter limit would apply to the state's Health Services Account, which covers a large portion of state Medicaid recipients and funds a program that provides state-subsidized health care to Washington's working poor.

"We don't want to see the programs we've worked so hard to support go away," said Elizabeth Swain, policy director for Community Health Plan of Washington, one of the groups involved in the Butt Out campaign.

Even before the group's ads appeared this week, I-791 opponents were trying to persuade businesses and other groups to spurn the initiative. They succeeded in persuading at least one company to back out.

Metropolitan Mortgage of Spokane had pledged $2,500 to the Save Our Spending Limits campaign.

The company withdrew the pledge two weeks ago after calls from local teachers who feared the measure might crimp school funding. Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, also urged the company to pull out.

"While the initiative might help control taxes, it might also harm education," said company Vice President Erik Skaggs. "That trade-off is not acceptable to us."

The ads targeting Philip Morris were funded by a coalition that includes the Washington State Labor Council, the state teachers union, the state PTA and the state chapter of the American Lung Association.

Filled with slogans such as "One more pack of big tobacco lies," the ads say Philip Morris is bankrolling I-791 — and urging businesses to help out — in an effort to hold down taxes and boost corporate profits.

Philip Morris spokesman Dave Tovar said the company, which has a variety of subsidiaries in Washington, is worried how tax increases would affect all its business interests, not just tobacco. But he denied trying to recruit other businesses to support the initiative.

Tovar said the company has agreed to contribute $20,000 to help get I-791 on the ballot.

But as of this week, Henderson said, the campaign had not received a check from Philip Morris. And even if the company comes through with the amount pledged, it would not be I-791's biggest contributor. So far, those honors go to the Association of Washington Realtors, which has given $25,000.

Tovar declined to comment on the anti-tobacco tenor of the ads.

But Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business — which has endorsed I-791 — called the ads "vitriolic."

"I'm very disappointed," Brunell said. "It completely tries to undermine any meaningful discussion of a spending limit."

Lisa Bond, president of the Washington State PTA, said she would have preferred taking a different tack — for instance, showing how I-791 could jeopardize education funding.

But she said others in the coalition believed they could get a bigger impact by singling out Philip Morris' support for the initiative.

"They pointed to polling that says everybody hates Big Tobacco," Bond said.