Rep. Ross Hunter voted in April to approve new taxes on soda and bottled water.
That was after the Medina Democrat lambasted such measures proposed to help close the state’s $2.8-billion budget deficit.
Hunter, who is chair of the House finance committee, told The Reporter he didn’t like the potential impacts such taxes could have on the Coca Cola bottling facility in Bellevue.
“There’s a lot of good family-wage jobs that will be lost,” he said in March. “That obviously factors in. I also just think it’s stupid.”
Hunter sponsored six amendments to the state’s 2010 tax bill, but he never touched the sections dealing with taxes on soda and bottled water. He voted in favor of the measure, along with every other Bellevue legislator except Sen. Rodney Tom – who took heat from fellow Democrats for his lack of support.
“I didn’t like the bill,” Hunter said. “It’s not one of my favorite pieces of legislation, which I was clear about during the session.”
So why not amend the measure to exclude the soda tax?
“I could have done that, and we would potentially still be in Olympia,” Hunter said. “At the end of a month’s worth of special sessions, my conclusion was that we needed to be finished.”
There was also the matter of losing tens of millions of dollars with each month the legislature failed to enact the tax package.
And so the carbonated-beverage tax went into effect without making Hunter’s favorite-policies list.
The new soda and bottled-water taxes took effect June 1.
The excise tax on pop costs two cents for every 12 ounces of carbonated beverage, while the standard 8-percent sales tax now applies to bottled water and candy.
Hunter said he doesn’t regret his vote because it helped the state avoid deeper cuts to services.
“I thought having two cents per can of pop was less bad than throwing millions more off of the basic-health plan, tuition assistance for low- and moderate-income people, and the level of cuts we would have to agree on without a compromise,” he said.
Opponents of the new taxes created Initiative 1107 as a repeal measure that could go before voters in November, and The American Beverage Association poured over $1 million into the campaign in June.
Supporters of the rollback submitted over 395,000 signatures on July 2. The Secretary of State requires at least 241,000 valid signatures to place an initiative before voters.
Hunter says it’s good that the electorate may now have its say over the new taxes.
“People will face the same decision I did,” he said. “If you want to repeal that bill, you will force the state to pull back on services. You don’t get to make tax decisions absent the services you purchase.”
