As they do most years, legislators are considering possiblechanges to the state's initiative system. That generates the usualshouts of alarm from populists who believe the process is a greatbulwark of the citizenry, against either the Legislature's inactionor its tyranny.
Rules that would require more registration and betteridentification of people paid to stand outside Home Depot and cajoleyou into signing are debatable. But one change being proposed ispretty hard to argue.
The secretary of state suggests raising the filing fee from $5 to$50. Before fiscal conservatives go apoplectic at a 900 percentincrease, it seems fair to note the filing fee has been five bucksfor a long time.
Since 1893.
For 118 years the state has charged people a five spot to filewhatever brilliant idea comes into their head. Last year, thatincluded changing the state seal to a picture of a tapeworm. A fewyears ago, someone else filed for a statewide vote on whether aperson who regularly sponsors initiatives is a horse's rear end.(Neither made the ballot.)
Since that fee was first set, Washington residents went fromcrossing the state by train or horse to crossing it by car or plane.They went from telegraphing their messages to tweeting them. They'veadded radio, movies, television, computers, the Internet, cellphones ... well, you get it. Almost everything has changed.
Except the filing fee.
Various "inflation calculators" that try to track the value ofmoney over time estimate that $5 in 1893 is worth between $120 and$150 today. But the calculators aren't very accurate before 1913,and it really depends on what you planned to spend that money on.Could be more. A lot more.
A look back at several editions of The Spokesman-Review andSpokane Chronicle from 1893 shows that one could get a dozen ladies'dresses, a pair of chenille curtains or a year's subscription to thenewspaper for $5. You could get dunned for that amount if convictedof vagrancy, although it was probably the rare vagrant who had $5.
Fresh salmon was 12.5 cents a pound, a bottle of claret wine wasa quarter, and a prime ticket to an evening of live theater was 50cents. Maybe the state could use some of these to come up with aninflation adjuster.
There's too much variation in dresses and curtains to make thecomparison, and vagrancy isn't a charge you see often in municipalcourt these days. But we'll sell you a year's subscription to thenewspaper for $192, and it includes full access to the website, adeal our 1893 edition couldn't offer.
Salmon was running $8.99 on special at Safeway last week. Youcould've bought 40 pounds of it for $5 in 1893; maybe the filing feeshould be $359.60. Of course, salmon was so much more plentifulbefore they put all the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, somaybe that's not fair.
Wine's a bit tricky, because there's such a range. You couldspend $80 on a bottle, but there's a good chance that bottle ofclaret advertised for a quarter was closer to three-buck Chuck atTrader Joe's than Chateauneuf du pape. Let's assume you have somestandards and were going to stay local - it's a good bet that 1893bottle wasn't from France - so you could pick up 20 bottles of ArborCrest Red for $10.75 each, case price, or $215.
In 1893, you could've bought 10 tickets and treated your friendsto Miss Essie Tittell, the Great Emotional Actress, starring in thegreat comedy drama "Pearl of Savoy" at Chase's Arcadia on Riverside.The best seats for "Legally Blonde" at the INB are going for $60.60,so 10 would cost you $606. Ouch.
The person filing an initiative in 1893 could have plunked down a$5 gold piece, which was a standard bit of coinage back in the day.That was a quarter ounce of gold, worth about $340 today; a freshlyminted 1893 Half Eagle, as the coin is called, could fetch as muchas $1,600 from a collector.
Just about any way you calculate it, raising the filing fee to$50 might be a bargain. Maybe we should just let the Legislature doit before they get greedy.
Spin Control, a weekly column Jim Camden, also appears onlinewith daily items, reader comments and video at spokesman.com/ blogs/spincontrol.
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