By Bill Lucia | Editor
Welcome back to the Daily Standard's weekend edition, where we recap some of the week's top stories.
Number of the week: $1.5 billion
That’s how much the state hauled in from its capital gains tax in its most recent round of collections, exceeding expectations and providing a bit of balm for the struggling budget. Still, a financial forecast out yesterday shows that “weakened economic activity” has reduced the state’s overall anticipated revenue through mid-2031 by nearly $1 billion since the last round of projections in February.
In other words, the capital gains money offers a boost, but it’s not a game-changer. “A mixed bag,” is how Senate Ways and Means Chair June Robinson, D-Everett, described the outlook. “We obviously have very positive revenue with the capital gains tax for the very short term. If you took that out, the forecast is generally down.”
Capital gains tax collections are roughly double what state officials expected as of February. And they’re enough to more or less erase the $878 million deficit looming in the 2028 fiscal year.
But capital gains tax revenue is also known to swing wildly year to year, as seen in Washington’s collections to date. And some taxpayers might’ve held off on making moves that would have yielded gains in 2024 because the tax was on the ballot that year. Had it been struck down, they could’ve avoided paying. The latest round of more robust collections could reflect some lagging payments from that time.
The capital gains figure will likely fuel further debate about taxing the rich. The tax only applied in 2025 to individual gains above $278,000, and real estate transactions are exempt. That $1.5 billion came from just 9,050 net payments in a state of roughly 8 million people. Lawmakers tweaked the tax last year so that gains above $1 million were subject to a 9.9% tax instead of the standard 7% rate.
“Today’s forecast reinforced two truths — taxing extraordinary wealth is an effective way to help pay for the programs and services that help all Washingtonians,” said Sen. Derek Stanford, D-Bothell, who is Ways and Means vice chair. The other truth, he said, is that the state and nation “are still stuck in a period of economic uncertainty because of the unpredictable and impulsive actions of the federal government.”
Keeping with past Republican criticism of how Democratic majorities in Olympia are managing the budget, Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, offered a different assessment. “Our problem with our budgets is legislatively created, and it needs to be legislatively fixed. It’s an issue of overspending,” said Orcutt, the senior Republican on the House Finance Committee.
The state’s next revenue forecast is due out in September. Gov. Bob Ferguson will issue a two-year budget proposal in December, and lawmakers will get to work on their version of the spending plan during the legislative session that kicks off in January.
For more on the forecast, see our coverage from yesterday…
By Jerry Cornfield
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Yakama Nation Fisheries staff encouraged attendees of the 5th annual Yakama Nation Lamprey Celebration to try touching the eel-like fish. The event held along the Willamette River in Oregon City on June 25, 2026, brought out hundreds of people. Pacific lamprey are an ancient and culturally significant species for many Northwest tribes. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
By Alex Baumhardt
OREGON CITY — Several hundred people turned out along the Willamette River this week to celebrate a fish often misunderstood for its style but long revered for its substance.
Pacific lamprey, a jawless fish that looks like an eel, spend years in the Willamette and Columbia River basins before journeying to sea and back to spawn before dying. It is a First Food for many Northwest tribes, including the Yakama Nation, which hosted its fifth annual Willamette Falls Lamprey Celebration at Clackamette Park.
Members of the Yakama Nation harvest lamprey at Willamette Falls, near Oregon City. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
The day before, more than two dozen tribal members went to the falls to harvest several dozen lamprey, most of which they brought to the Yakama Valley to share with members. A couple dozen others were sent to Bonneville Dam to ease their journey and be released closer to their spawning grounds without the challenge of the Columbia River dams.
More than 60 years ago, roughly 400,000 adult lamprey were regularly recorded at Bonneville Dam, according to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Nowadays it’s less than 20,000, and scientists estimate that lamprey today have lost up to 70% of their historic distribution range throughout the Columbia Basin.
Where’s the governor?
He had plans to attend last night’s World Cup match in Seattle between Egypt and Iran. “The governor is an avid soccer fan, and I am aware the governor is attending tonight's match with a college friend. Given that this is his personal capacity, I don’t have more details,” his communications director, Brionna Aho, said in an email yesterday.
Earlier in the week, Ferguson announced a new economic development council and turned out for the signing of an agreement to link Washington’s cap-and-trade market with one covering California and Quebec.
Gov. Bob Ferguson, at podium, during a Thursday event where he signed an order to form the Governor's Economic Development Council. (Photo by Aspen Ford/Washington State Standard)
On Tuesday, he posted on social media that he’d signed “a first-of-its-kind compact giving Puyallup Tribal law enforcement officers access to the state’s law enforcement officers’ and fire fighters’ retirement pension plan.” He described it as a “historic event,” but his office didn’t let the Capitol press corps know it was happening.
On Wednesday, his office sent out the first calendar update for the governor since June 3. It shows a handful of happenings through July 1, including meetings on Tuesday, June 30, with Sen. June Robinson and state House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon.
See also…
With cracks showing in WA economy, Ferguson forms new council to look for fixes | by Jake Goldstein-Street and Jerry Cornfield
IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK…
Deaths and critical injuries among children in Washington’s child welfare system fell steeply in the first quarter of 2026, state officials reported Wednesday.
A federal judge on Thursday blocked major portions of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding he had exceeded his constitutional authority.
That court ruling came after Postmaster General David Steiner said Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service wouldn’t deliver mail ballots in states that refuse to turn over lists of voters to the federal government.
Earlier in the week, Postal Service officials skipped a hearing with Washington lawmakers where they were scheduled to appear.
Electric utilities across the Pacific Northwest are fuming that their customers might be saddled with the costs of a coal-burning power plant in Centralia that isn’t producing any power.
The state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld Washington’s regulations for how farmers and haulers of agricultural goods receive the exemption on fuel purchases promised under the state’s cap-and-trade system.
State Supreme Court justices are also weighing a dispute over where a transgender woman held in state prisons should be confined.
A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel management plans for hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land.
Washington state’s gas tax, already among the highest in the nation, is going up next week.
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