How the Attorney General Writes Initiative Ballot Titles

Who writes the words on an initiative petition

A sponsor files a proposed initiative with the Secretary of State, which sends it to the state’s code reviser for a review the sponsor may accept or ignore. After the sponsor refiles it, the Secretary of State numbers the measure and sends it to the Attorney General, under RCW 29A.72.020 and .040. The Attorney General then has five days to write the ballot title.

That title is what a voter reads at a signature table, months before any campaign exists, and it is what appears on the ballot. In practice the drafting is done in the office’s Solicitor General division. The Secretary of State’s list of 2026 initiatives to the people links a ballot-title letter for each of the 33 filed this year. Every letter is signed by one of five lawyers: deputy solicitors general Peter B. Gonick, Alicia O. Young, Emma Grunberg and Karl D. Smith, and assistant attorney general Freeman Halle. Gonick signed 24.

The unit predates the current attorney general. Young signed the office’s July 2024 disclosure letter for I-2117 under Attorney General Bob Ferguson, and two 2026 titles under Attorney General Nick Brown.

What the law allows: ten words and thirty

The words “This measure would” that open every description are part of the fixed format in RCW 29A.72.050(3), not of the thirty. Counted that way, none of the 33 descriptions written this year is over the limit, and 25 are exactly at it. Six more are at 29.

One title does not follow the format. The statement of subject the office wrote for IP26-610 reads “Initiative Measure No. IP26-610 state taxes.” The word “concerns,” required by the statute and present in all ten titles written for the same sponsor on the same day, is missing.

Where the words come from

No part of chapter 29A.72 RCW lets a sponsor propose a ballot title. What a sponsor does control is the text of the measure, including the one-line “relating to” clause that opens it. The office’s title letters quote that clause, and in 2026 the office often used it. In nine of the 33 filings the subject statement is the sponsor’s clause, word for word or with a trailing qualifier dropped: “state and local taxes.” Where the clause was something else, such as “repealing the income tax enacted in chapter 238,” the office wrote its own subject: “state taxes.”

That is how “carbon tax credit trading” reached the 2024 ballot. The phrase does not appear in the Climate Commitment Act, chapter 70A.65 RCW, which I-2117 would have repealed; that law calls its program “cap and invest.” It appears twice in the initiative’s own text, filed in May 2023, whose opening clause describes “any type of carbon tax credit trading, also known as ‘cap and trade’ or ‘cap and tax’ scheme.” The office’s July 2024 letter calls “concerns carbon tax credit trading” its “previously submitted ballot title.” Voters rejected I-2117, with 61.95% voting no, according to the Secretary of State’s certified results.

Sponsors can also file again. On April 10, 2026, Brian Heywood, whose committee Let’s Go Washington is the measure’s campaign, filed eleven income-tax repeal initiatives. The office wrote the same ballot title for all eleven, word for word. Eleven days later Heywood filed a twelfth, IP26-645, which drew a different title, one that adds a ban on any income tax and a definition of “income.” That is the measure on this November’s ballot, Initiative 645. Across all 33 filings this year, the office wrote 20 distinct descriptions.

When a judge rewrites the title

Anyone may appeal a ballot title within five days, but only to Thurston County Superior Court, which must decide within five days. Under RCW 29A.72.080, “The decision of the superior court shall be final.”

In 2024 that is what produced the title of I-2066, the natural-gas initiative. The Attorney General’s office had described its subject as “natural gas regulations.” Climate Solutions, NW Energy Coalition and Washington Conservation Action appealed. The court’s order of May 15, 2024, signed by Judge Allyson Zipp, was the sponsor’s proposed order, with the line keeping the office’s title struck through and the new subject written in by hand: “regulating energy services, including natural gas and electrification.”

Voters approved I-2066 in November 2024. On Sept. 17, 2026, the state Supreme Court struck it down, 6-3, in Climate Solutions v. State, for combining more than one subject. The title did not decide the case. The majority, written by Chief Justice Debra Stephens, ruled on the single-subject rule alone and “decline[d] to reach the additional constitutional arguments,” including whether the title expressed the subject. The dissent, written by Justice Sal Mungia and joined by Justices Charles Johnson and Sheryl Gordon McCloud, found the court-written title “adequate to inform the average voter.”

The sentence on the ballot that is not part of the ballot title

Since 2022 a measure that repeals or changes a tax carries a third sentence, printed between the description and the question. The Attorney General writes this “public investment impact disclosure” too. For I-645, filed July 23, 2026, it reads:

“This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”

— Attorney General’s disclosure for IP26-645, signed by deputy solicitor general Karl D. Smith

The law treats that sentence differently from the words around it.

It has its own rules instead. It must use “neutral language,” and when the money at stake is mostly the state general fund, its description may run 15 words and “must list the top three categories of state services funded by the general fund in the current state budget,” under RCW 29A.72.027. The I-645 description is exactly 15 words; seven of them are inside the two parentheticals.

Those 15 words were not written for the ballot first. They appear verbatim, parentheses included, in the summary of the fiscal impact statement the Office of Financial Management filed the same day. The statement’s PDF was created about an hour before the disclosure’s, according to the files’ own metadata. The law allows the office to consult the budget office.

Whether the three named categories are the top three depends on a word the law does not define. In the Legislature’s own summary of the current budget, the 2026 Legislative Budget Notes, they are the three largest areas of general-fund-related spending. The same document prints human services on two lines.

Source: 2026 Legislative Budget Notes, page O-14, 2025-27 biennium after the 2026 supplemental budget. Read the human services lines separately and higher education is fourth.

The parenthetical “primarily healthcare” depends on a definition too. Within the $31.6 billion, the Health Care Authority accounts for $9.4 billion, long-term care $5.8 billion and the state’s mental hospitals $1.4 billion, about 53% together. Without long-term care it is about a third. The same human services total includes the Department of Corrections, at $3.4 billion.

The fiscal impact statement projects a loss of $11.4 billion over state fiscal years 2027 through 2031; the general-fund loss begins in the third year, fiscal 2029. It also notes that the Legislature meant the new tax’s money for school meals, childcare and local governments, but by law the disclosure must name general-fund categories instead. Our earlier report on the income-tax workgroup documents what a five-year window cannot show: the tax’s $1 million threshold shrinks about 29% against the rule the Senate passed over twenty years.

How the challenges to the I-645 disclosure ended

By early August, three cases about the I-645 disclosure and explanatory statement were before Thurston County Superior Court. Arthur West, representing himself, asked the court to find the disclosure law unconstitutional or to change the wording, in West v. Hobbs, No. 26-2-04498-34. Let’s Go Washington, the campaign for the measure, and No on 645, the campaign against it, each appealed the wording under RCW 29A.72.028; their two appeals were combined, according to NPI. The third case, No. 26-2-04661-34, challenged the explanatory statement; on TVW’s recording it was argued for No on 645 by Pacifica Law Group’s Kai Smith.

West’s case was heard the morning of Aug. 7, before Judge Chris Lanese, the Washington State Standard and NPI reported. On TVW’s recording of the hearing, the lawyer for the state, deputy solicitor general Karl D. Smith, told the court there was “another hearing this afternoon on the wording,” and that the state was not asking the court to affirm the disclosure in West’s case: “leave that for the afternoon hearing, because we can’t have two different public-investment impact disclosures.”

The judge ruled on the wording anyway, because West had not withdrawn the request and the cases had not been combined, and acknowledged that the ruling “could potentially be inconsistent” with the afternoon’s: “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” The judge took up the parentheticals, which are not the statute’s own terms, and found them neutral: “People could quibble, but I don’t find that to be un-neutral.” The court upheld the law, affirmed the disclosure under RCW 29A.72.028 and dismissed West’s case.

After that ruling, a second judge, Judge Skinder, “agreed with” both campaigns that their own appeals “should not be considered in light of Lanese’s ruling,” NPI reported. NPI says it is part of the coalition opposing I-645. The same afternoon, Judge Anne Egeler, ruling on the explanatory statement, adopted revised language the Attorney General’s office had offered. That order, too, was finished by hand in the courtroom.

West appealed. On Aug. 20, Supreme Court Commissioner Michael Johnston denied an emergency injunction. “There are no appellate decisions interpreting RCW 29A.72.028,” Johnston wrote, and the superior court’s order “is final and therefore not subject to further appellate review.” The full court then split 4-4 on West’s motion to overturn that ruling, so it failed, the Washington State Standard reported: Justices Charles Johnson, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, G. Helen Whitener and Theo Angelis would have kept the disclosure off the ballot, and Chief Justice Stephens and Justices Steven González, Mungia and Colleen Melody would not.

The finality rule exists so campaigns and the voters’ pamphlet are not left waiting. In its first test, it meant the first judge to rule on the wording decided it for everyone, in a case neither campaign brought.

The disclosure law has been tested before. In 2024 the sponsors of I-2117 and two other measures asked the courts to stop the first disclosures from being written at all. The Supreme Court ruled against them in Walsh v. Hobbs and pointed to suits for declaratory and injunctive relief as the proper route. That is the route West took in 2026.

The five-day deadline no one can check

The law gives the Attorney General five business days from receipt. No public record shows when receipt happens. The “filed” date stamped on each numbered initiative text is the sponsor’s original filing, before the code reviser’s review of up to seven working days and the sponsor’s up to fifteen working days to refile. From that stamp to the issued title, the 2026 filings took from 6 to 19 business days; the median was 12. That is consistent with the office meeting its deadline every time, and it cannot confirm the office met it once.

The letters

On March 20 and April 6, 2026, before I-645’s title was written, Pacifica Law Group partners Paul Lawrence and Kai Smith wrote to the Attorney General’s office “to provide input on the ballot titles and ballot measure summaries” for initiatives to repeal the income tax, and urged it to emphasize the fiscal effect of repeal, The Center Square reported. On April 9, SEIU 775 treasurer Adam Glickman emailed the letters to the office’s chief of staff, David Postman, who forwarded them to Solicitor General Noah Purcell: “FYI, in case you haven’t seen these.” The Center Square obtained the emails under the state’s public records law. Both The Center Square and Seattle Red reported the exchange on Aug. 13.

“The AGO’s longstanding policy has been to accept input on ballot titles from anyone who wishes to submit it,” the office’s deputy communications director, Mike Faulk, told The Center Square. “While we do and will continue to accept input from anyone, we make the final decision about how best to write ballot title language and meet our statutory obligations.” Pacifica said that input to the office “is a standard part of our ballot measure practice.” Let’s Go Washington said it had never written to the office to shape a title, only “during the appeal process.” Rob McKenna, a former attorney general and a plaintiff in the Citizen Action Defense Fund’s lawsuit against the income tax, called the contacts “obviously highly irregular.”

Attorney General Nick Brown was a Pacifica partner from 2017 to 2021 and again from June 2023, the firm’s own announcements say; the firm announced “Pacifica Partner Nick Brown Elected Attorney General” on Nov. 6, 2024.

Pacifica’s Kai Smith appears at almost every stage of the two disputes, always opposite the sponsors. The firm’s biography says Smith represented the coalition that challenged I-2066 and “has litigated over a dozen ballot title appeals”; “Kai Smith, Attorney for Petitioners” signs the 2024 order that rewrote I-2066’s title. In 2026 Smith co-signed the letters, argued No on 645’s challenge to the explanatory statement, and filed a brief defending the disclosure in the Supreme Court for the Washington State Budget and Policy Center and the Economic Opportunity Institute.

Nothing in chapter 29A.72 RCW provides for outside input on a ballot title or requires the office to disclose any it receives. The only consultation the chapter mentions is the Attorney General’s, with “the office of financial management or any other state or local agencies,” for the disclosure. The door the office describes is open to anyone who knows it is there.

Does the wording matter?

Probably most at the signature table and least in the voting booth. A ballot title is the only description most signers read, but by November voters have seen a campaign. I-2117 lost by about 24 points under a title its sponsor’s own words shaped. With a handful of measures reaching the ballot each year, there is not enough here to measure an effect, and this report does not claim one.