Regulating Olympia

This is a review of a couple of the more egregious bills to hit the legislature.

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Washington State allows initiative petition campaigns to hire signature gatherers. House Bill 1668 increases the initiative filing fee, and will increase regulation on petition "circulators", and will charge a fee to register signature gathering companies.

Every element of this proposed legislation is designed to clamp down on the petition voice of the People. (Part of the Democrats plan to see democracy inaction.)

The "Democrats" have been repeatedly stung by the initiatives of the people. Its no surprise all the sponsors of this bill are all "Democrats". The "Democratic" Party has not been happy serving the will of the People in a long time.

Try looking at the Get Fiscal Note link on the state HB 1668 webpage. The link didn't work for me. It would be interesting if there is monkey biz happening in Olympia on this one.

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HB 1692 will establish rent control in manufacture housing rentals. The authoritarian, nanny-state element of the legislature is sticking their toe in the door again.

Here is the official bill digest:

• "Facilitates and encourages fair bargaining between tenants and owners of manufactured/mobile home parks to achieve mutually satisfactory agreements regarding space or lot rents in the parks.
• "Protects tenants from unreasonable space or lot rent increases while simultaneously recognizing and providing for the need of park owners to receive a just and reasonable return on the investment in their property.
• "Creates the manufactured/mobile home park rental review board.
• "Provides that the act is null and void if appropriations are not approved."

That phrase "fair bargaining" is a tells us someone is gonna get hurt if this bill is enacted. The phrase presumes someone is getting unfair treatment, and the legislature has to fix the bad boys wagon.

Another government regulatory agency will be created: The Rental Review Board.

Rent control never made rental housing better. Rent control has only limited the quantity of housing available and degraded the quality of the housing. Although the dollar price of the housing may go down, the loss of quality way offsets the price decrease.

If this bill is enacted into law, it will be another Great Waster of human effort. Rent control is a hateful idea. Rent control is bad because it interferes with free people making use of their property.

The greedy Democrats want to make free use of your private property, so they want rent control. They want to impose their sense of what should be as long as it doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't matter to them that it costs you the control of what you own.

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Once again, into the breach. Notify your legislators in Olympia and tell them what you think of these ideas to micromanage our way of life.