One of my favorite things about working for the Washington Research Council is that our organization has a long history of non-political public policy research.

The WRC was formed in 1954, with the merger of the Washington State Taxpayers Association and the Washington Bureau of Governmental Research (both of which had been established in 1932). According to our president at the time (as reported in a 1954 Seattle Times editorial), the new WRC was meant “to shift emphasis from political activity to a comprehensive research and educational program on problems of state and local government.”

In 1955, the Seattle Times editorial board wrote,

The reorganization which established the presently-constituted State Research Council has proved to be a wise move. For what the taxpayers of the state need and lack most of all, in attempting to understand and help solve governmental problems, is reliable information, with intelligent analysis and interpretation, on the increasingly complex operations of local governing agencies.

The best mention of the WRC that I have thus far found in the Seattle Times archives is from 1963, by the Times’s business writer, Boyd Burchard. Of the WRC, Burchard wrote, “The council is so square, in fact, that you can’t even get pressure-slanted or politically biased information from it.”

Further, “Some people think the organization might better be called ‘the public-expenditure watchdog of Washington.’ Its staff of pure researchers dig in for facts where politicians and laymen fear to tread. They probe forbidding mountains of fiscal complexities and sort, sift, analyze and report their findings and recommended changes . . . .” May we always live up to that!