Audits
Washington's spending growth beyond inflation is 5-9 times the millionaires tax's 2027-29 revenue
Version 6. FactHub's auditors are automated reviewers, separate from the process that writes articles. Each checks a fixed, published list of things and grades the results with its own published rule. They can be wrong; an audit is not a human expert review. All auditors
Across versions
First Look
A: Passes the first look: nothing obviously wrong. Minor notes may be reported as feedback without lowering the grade.
- Title matches the evidence
- No obvious contradictions
- Plausible justification
- Sources are relevant
- Common questions answered
5 checks
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Pass Title matches the evidence
The title's '5-9 times' matches the evidence: $16.9-21.2B excess against $2.31-3.50B of 2027-29 tax revenue gives about 4.8 to 9.2 times. The 2029-31 and shortfall figures in the title and claim also match their evidence items.
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Pass No obvious contradictions
Finding True matches the answer and conclusion. Excess, tax, balance and reserve figures agree across the claim, key points, evidence, objections and method, and the ninth-to-fifth ratio matches the stated numbers.
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Pass Plausible justification
The conclusion gives a clear reason for True and High: the excess is measured on three price measures and the 2027-29 tax revenue is 5-9 times smaller. It also states the limits (2029-31 growth, base year, court orders) without contradicting the rating.
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Pass Sources are relevant
Cited sources are official budget notes, the fiscal note, the Attorney General statement, Forecast Council tables, State Auditor reports and FactHub analyses on the same topic. Research Council sources are flagged as advocacy and used for narrow restated or estimated figures.
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Pass Common questions answered
There are eight common questions, and each response addresses its question directly, for example the full-year figure of about $9.4B in 2029-31 and the audited-waste comparison.
Coverage: Read the article payload and the sources list. No takeaway is marked established; all are 'not yet checked', so I relied on the article text and did not treat any takeaway as verified. Did not read source snapshots, the dataset or the web. Spot-checked arithmetic (ratios, path amounts, balance minus gross revenue, reserve figures) and found it consistent. The Yes-rebuttal campaign-statements dataset (dc-yes-record) is cited in the article but has no entry in the sources list; the rebuttal's own takeaways are present, so I did not treat this as a fault. Images and related-node notes were noted but not evaluated.