Local News

Property - House and Keys

An initiative just filed for the reduction of property taxes would cut the portion of taxpayer funds going to the state by 60% over three years. I-1786 is intended to give struggling Washington taxpayers some relief after the damage wrought by Governor Inslee's coronavirus response. Many have felt the pinch of greatly increased property taxes coming during 2020, while struggling with reduced income stemming from the Governor's restrictive business policies. Unfortunately, the Governor and the Democrat majority in the Legislature have proposed many new tax increases for 2021.

NASA - US from Space

We see that there's a lot going on nationally, events are moving fast, and there's seemingly much going on behind the scenes that we are not fully aware of. And with that, there's been rumors of a plausible possibility of the internet going down soon, as part of everything else taking place to keep the people in the dark and remove certain viewpoints from the discussion. Be prepared for your email not working, your cloud services not working - with all your data there inaccessible, and your banking and other important sites not working.

Restore Washington logo

Leaders of the I-1114 petition drive announced today that the efforts to qualify the initiative had fallen short of the 320,000 signatures needed to send it to the Legislature.

Money spilled out of jar

In the days leading up to Christmas, businesses statewide opened an unwelcome present from state government. A major tax increase. The Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) has sent out their end of the year tax rate notices to all businesses statewide, notifying them of their unemployment tax rates for 2021.

Closed - by Tim Mossholder

State employment data shows that a significant number of non-farm Okanogan County jobs have simply gone away this year, as most industries in the county are contracting. Even the government sector has significantly contracted this year – only state and local government positions though, as Federal government jobs only grew this year.