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Articles written by Paul Guppy


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  • What's coming this legislative session

    Paul Guppy, Washington Policy Center|Jan 2, 2025

    As Washingtonians take a welcome year-end break to spend time with family and celebrate Christmas, our state’s political leaders are hard at work drafting the agenda for the upcoming legislative session. The legislature doesn’t meet formally until January 13th, but the governor’s budget proposal, a list of 215 pre-filed bills, and a curious leaked e-mail give us hints of what some lawmakers are planning. Tax collections are up and there is ample revenue to fund government services, plus increases in most cases, for the 2025-27 budget cycle...

  • Loper decision is a victory for representative democracy

    Paul Guppy, Washington Policy Center|Jul 11, 2024

    The Loper family own Loper Bright Enterprises, a modest New England-based fishing business. They pursue the same dream shared by many Americans – to provide their customers with quality service at a fair price while making a good living. Recently, however, the bureaucrats at the National Marine Fisheries Service had other ideas. The agency's budget was tight, so they decided to make the Lopers, along with similar family-owned businesses, pay for a government on-board inspector by charging them $710 a day. When the Lopers protested the b...

  • U-Haul data shows people are leaving the state in droves

    Paul Guppy, Vice president for research at the Washington Policy Center|Jan 28, 2021

    British historian Thomas Macaulay famously said, “The best government is one that desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.” That standard is clearly not what people are experiencing in Washington state. For years, leaders in state government have been increasing the tax burden and imposing ever-tighter regulations that limit personal opportunity, lower household incomes and fall hardest on working people, middle-class families and small business owners. On top of tha...