SEATTLE — Democratic state Sen. Noel Frame traces her interest in tax policy to her time as a teenager in the 1990s, concerned about scarce funding for her school district in Battle Ground, Washington.

“There was something there about taxes that I needed to figure out,” she recalled to a room packed with progressives here this week. “Here I am, I’m 45, and I’m fighting the same exact fight that I was fighting when I was 16.”

The upcoming bouts will be high-stakes, with lawmakers vexed by a budget shortfall that billions of dollars of tax increases, coupled with spending cuts, failed to resolve this year.

In the state Senate, Frame, who is from Seattle, is running point for Democrats on tax policy.

“The Revenue Queen.” That’s how Eli Taylor Goss, who leads the Washington State Budget an

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