Spin Control: New proposal to split state has same old prospects

In the Legislature, some ideas that seemed dead can come back to life.

So it’s possible that in the spirit of Easter Week, state Rep. Rob Chase came up with a way to breathe life into one of the oldest – and possibly least successful – ideas in state government history: separating Washington into two parts.

As recounted several times in columns and news stories, proposals to split the state at the Cascade Crest date back at least to 1913. They are usually proposed by one or more legislators from Eastern Washington who think their half of the state gets short shrift from the majority of legislators from Western Washington.

Their success can be measured by the fact that the boundaries of Washington remain in the same shape that they’ve had since 1889.

In the past several decades, these proposals have been spearheaded by legislators in the Spokane Valley’s 4th District. The late Sen. Bob McCaslin regularly proposed splitting the state during his tenure, and even got a hearing on the legislation when Republicans were in charge of the Senate and he had a chairmanship.

Former Rep. Matt Shea filed such a bill most of the sessions he served, usually joined by like-minded, small-government conservatives. His effort to create the state of Liberty featured a rally in the Capitol Rotunda. It even had its own Facebook page, flag and merchandise website. The Facebook page hasn’t had much action in the last year or two and the merch site is apparently shut down, but they still got more attention than the bills did from the Legislature.

Chase introduced a split-the-state bill during his first stint in the Legislature in 2021, and like the Shea proposals, it died a quiet death.

This time around, he came up with a new wrinkle, which might be described as “Let’s split the state without actually splitting it.”

Rather than two states, Chase proposed a bill Thursday that Washington be divided into two “autonomous regions” – dubbed Columbia to the east and Puget Sound to the west – within the existing state boundaries. Each region would have its own governor, judges and legislatures. So, presumably, its own laws, administrative rules and tax system.

The advantage of this arrangement, Chase explained in the announcement of the bill, was that it would not need Congressional approval like a complete division of the state would under the U.S. Constitution. So Washington would still have the same number of U.S. senators and representatives, and the same number of Electoral College votes. (State institutions like Washington State and Eastern Washington universities might be spared the problem of changing their names, logos and signage, although that wasn’t mentioned in the announcement.)

Introduced with just three days left in the legislative session, Chase acknowledged in the announcement that the bill can’t get a hearing before the session ends. Instead, he intends it as a way to generate discussion over the months before the 2026 session.

So here are some discussion points.

While this is arguably a more measured approach, there are a couple of problems other than the tough-to-get Congressional approval that such a setup confronts.

One is that no state exists with such autonomous regions. The Chase bill mentions legislation in New York to create three autonomous regions in that state, but it neglects to say that those bills have suffered essentially the same fate as previous split-Washington-in-two bills have: They are introduced by a handful of minority members, never get a hearing and die in committee. So no road map there.

Another problem, often pointed out by West Side Democrats in previous discussions, is that Eastern Washington tends to get more in state government spending that it pays into state coffers through taxes. An autonomous Puget Sound regional government is unlikely to ship money to the Cascade autonomous region, so either taxes would have to go up on the East Side or services down.

It also requires a state constitutional amendment – a resolution for one was also introduced – but that would take a two-thirds vote of both houses.

There’s probably not enough Democrats who harbor a “good-bye and good riddance” sentiment to these perennial suggestions to push such an amendment through.

Feel free to talk among yourselves. But don’t expect much action on this proposal in 2026, even though Chase sits on the House State Government Committee where this bill was sent.