Rep. Matt Marshall: $300,000 for reparations study, veto for public safety
Washington is spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to study race-based reparations, while money to help crack down on organized retail crime was vetoed by the governor. For people trying to afford groceries and keep their communities safe, those priorities do not make much sense.
The United States Constitution promises equal protection under the law to every person. The Washington Constitution goes further, stating that the state cannot grant special privileges or immunities to a particular class of citizens that do not extend to all on the same terms. State law also bars government from giving preferential treatment based on race in public programs. Those rules exist so people are treated as individuals under the law, not as members of permanent racial categories.
The push for a race-based reparations blueprint
A race-based reparations program runs against that idea. It would direct money and benefits to some residents based on ancestry and race, paid for by everyone else. That is hard to reconcile with a constitutional framework that says government should not favor one racial group over another or hand out special advantages to a class defined by race.
Despite those principles, Democratic majorities in Olympia set aside $300,000 for a reparative action study. The mission is to study and recommend potential reparative actions and then design ways to deliver them. The state Department of Commerce has commissioned research to examine historical harms and outline possible reparations, including potential cash payments and race-based benefits for people who meet certain lineage tests.
Organized retail theft vs. ideological spending
This is happening at the same time Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson vetoed budget funding to fight organized retail theft. Organized retail theft is not victimless. It is gangs of thieves hitting grocery stores, pharmacies and big-box retailers. It raises prices for shoppers, closes locations in vulnerable neighborhoods and puts workers at risk. When the choice is between helping law enforcement get a handle on that and paying consultants to write a reparations blueprint, it is telling that under one-party rule, the blueprint wins and the crime-fighting tools lose.
All of this lands in a climate where many people feel squeezed. Property taxes are up. Every day goods cost more. Families worry about rent, gas and utilities. Meanwhile, the state budget continues to grow faster than its household income because the Democratic majority keeps layering on new spending and new programs.
In that context, spending six figures on a study intended to build a race-based transfer program feels out of touch. It feeds the sense that this majority is focused on symbolism and ideological projects, not on the hard work of running a state.
Re-evaluating historical debt and modern law
None of this denies the ugly reality of slavery and racism in American history. Those chapters are real, and they still shape outcomes today. But after the Civil War, the Constitution was amended to end slavery, guarantee equal protection and protect voting rights for Black Americans. The goal was to stop the law from ranking people by race ever again.
When the country ignored those promises and allowed segregation and other discriminatory systems, the remedy was to enforce equal rights more aggressively and tear down racially discriminatory laws and practices, not to assign permanent group-based debts.
Reparations rest on a different idea: that people can inherit legal debts or claims based on what their ancestors suffered or did. Modern law does not work that way. We do not send bills to great-grandchildren for their great-grandparents’ crimes. We hold individuals responsible for their own actions. That matters for moral reasons and for social peace.
Practical challenges and the path forward
There are also practical questions that no study can cleanly solve. Who pays? Anyone who pays taxes, including immigrants who arrived long after slavery, descendants of abolitionists and low-income families already under strain. Who qualifies? People who fit a defined racial and lineage category, determined by some mix of self-reporting, genealogy and official records. In a state as diverse as Washington, drawing hard lines about who is “in” and “out” for cash or special programs based on bloodline is almost guaranteed to create tension.
There are better ways to confront racial disparities and honor history that do not involve race-based payments and do not ignore budget limits. Enforce civil rights laws in housing, employment, lending and education, so no one is denied opportunity because of race. Target investments at high-poverty communities because of need, not color, so help goes to struggling families in both urban and rural areas. Support small businesses, job training and trades programs that give people a path to stable work. Fund mental health, addiction treatment and local law enforcement tools to deal with organized retail theft and other crimes that hit working people hardest.
Those are the kinds of priorities most residents recognize as legitimate uses of their tax dollars. They help people right now. They treat individuals as individuals and align with the promise of equal protection rather than replacing it with a system of group entitlements. Given the choice between designing a race-based reparations scheme and funding basic public safety and opportunity, many Washingtonians will ask a simple question: Which one actually makes life better for their family and community?
Matt Marshall is a Republican representing Washington’s 2nd Legislative District
