CERTIFICATION OF ENROLLMENT

 

                   SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8019

 

 

 

 

                        55th Legislature

                      1998 Regular Session

Passed by the Senate February 14, 1998

  YEAS 48   NAYS 0

 

 

 

President of the Senate

 

Passed by the House March 4, 1998

  YEAS 97   NAYS 0

             CERTIFICATE

 

I, Mike O=Connell, Secretary of the Senate of the State of Washington, do hereby certify that the attached is  SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8019 as passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives on the dates hereon set forth.

 

 

 

Speaker of the

      House of Representatives

                            Secretary

 

 

Approved Place Style On Codes above, and Style Off Codes below. 

                                FILED

          

 

 

Governor of the State of Washington

                   Secretary of State

                  State of Washington


          _______________________________________________

 

                    SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8019

          _______________________________________________

 

             Passed Legislature - 1998 Regular Session

 

State of Washington      55th Legislature     1998 Regular Session

 

By Senators Winsley and Prentice

 

Read first time 01/19/98.  Referred to Committee on Financial Institutions, Insurance & Housing.

Requesting federal funds for housing finance.


    TO THE HONORABLE WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

    We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent and petition as follows:

    WHEREAS, The policy of the state of Washington is to assure the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens; and

    WHEREAS, An adequate supply of tax-exempt private activity bond volume cap is essential and critically important in financing affordable, decent first-time home ownership opportunities and low-income and moderate-income rental housing in this state and the nation, as well as several other critically important purposes that contribute to the well-being of the citizens of the state; and

    WHEREAS, An adequate supply of low-income housing tax credits is essential and critically important to financing affordable, decent, rental housing units that contribute to the well-being of the citizens of the state; and

    WHEREAS, The United States Congress, in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, established restrictions on tax-exempt private activity municipal bonds, effective January 1, 1988, that imposed a limit, based on each state's population, not to exceed the greater of fifty dollars per capita per calendar year, but failed to include an automatic inflationary multiplier to ensure that the purchasing power of this resource did not become diluted; and

    WHEREAS, The amount of tax-exempt private activity bonding for this state is inadequate to meet the tax-exempt private activity financing demands of the state of Washington, and its agencies and political subdivisions; and

    WHEREAS, The United States Congress, in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, established restrictions on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that imposed a limit based on each state's population to be equal to one dollar and twenty-five cents per capita per calendar year, but failed to include an automatic inflationary multiplier to ensure that the purchasing power of this resource did not become diluted; and

    WHEREAS, Since 1987 the effects of annual inflation have diluted the purchasing power of Washington's tax-exempt private activity bonding cap and the low-income housing tax credits by forty-six percent; and

    WHEREAS, Such loss has been devastating to the ability of this state and the nation to provide adequate, affordable housing opportunities to its lower-income constituents by reducing nearly in half the number of single-family housing units and multifamily rental housing units available and affordable to the ever-increasing number of lower-income, first-time home buyers and renters in Washington, thus causing many of these families to remain in substandard or expensive housing, among other negative impacts; and

    WHEREAS, If the state and its agencies and political subdivisions continue to be unable to provide adequate levels of tax-exempt private activity bond financing and low-income housing tax credit financing for these purposes, the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of the state of Washington will be further negatively impacted;

    NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that the United States Congress increase immediately the tax-exempt private activity bond volume cap and the allocation of low-income housing tax credits available to each state, including Washington, to levels that would fully restore the tax-exempt private activity bond volume cap purchasing power and the low-income housing tax credit purchasing power of each state, including Washington, to levels that would offset the diluted effects of inflation since 1987, and index increases for these resources to inflation in future years.

    BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately transmitted to the Honorable William J. Clinton, President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and each member of Congress from the State of Washington.

 


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