Judge Burke: Washington cannot borrow a dollar to build its capitol
Answering Populist weeklies that accused the capitol commission of planning to sink the state a million dollars into debt, commissioner Thomas Burke said the law allows exactly one funding source — 132,000 acres of granted land — and no taxes at all.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It has been stated by several weekly newspapers with Populistic tendencies that the state was to be run into debt in order to get money for the building of the capitol. This statement was brought to the attention of Judge Burke, one of the commissioners, yesterday, who said:
"There is no ground for the report which seems to have gained currency in some quarters that the state capitol commission proposes to run the state in debt a million of dollars to build the state capitol. Neither the commission nor any of its members would favor such a course even if the commission had the power to create such a liability on the part of the state, which it clearly has not.
"Under the constitution and laws of this state the capitol can be built only out of the proceeds of the sales of land granted to the state of Washington for that express purpose. The state cannot go in debt to build the capitol; nor can taxes, special or general, be levied for such an object.
"The provision made in lands, namely, 132,000 acres, for the construction of the capitol ought to be ample to build a capitol costing a million of dollars without calling upon the taxpayers for any help. Competent judges say it is, but whether it is or not the law says, in effect, that the capitol must be built out of the proceeds of these lands or not at all."
“The state cannot go in debt to build the capitol; nor can taxes, special or general, be levied for such an object.”
Washington set aside 132,000 acres of federal grant land to pay for a capitol, and for three decades the fund and the argument crawled along — commission fights, site fights, and repeated claims that the money was being misspent. The Legislative Building that finally opened in 1928 cost far more than a million dollars, and the land-grant principle Burke defended here is the same mechanism that funded schools and universities across the West.
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