BY EDITOR CRAIG GROSHART
State legislators did their job last Saturday by partially plugging a financial hole in the state budget. However, they didn’t do themselves – or the public – any favors. The state’s finances still are a mess.
Lawmakers trimmed $590 million from the current budget with a combination of spending cuts, transferring money from other accounts and banking on the faster collection of taxes. That’s a lot, but remember the state faces a $1.1 billion deficit in the current budget and the prospect of a $4.6 billion deficit in the budget that will start in min-2011 and run until mid-2013.
To its credit, the Legislature’s effort on Saturday was bipartisan. But, then, lawmakers faced essentially a Hobson’s Choice – they really weren’t any options available.
Next year, the Legislature will have a hard time raising taxes as voters in November limited their ability without a statewide vote. Maybe taxpayers will be in a more generous mood when they see the types of cuts that will have to be made to balance the next budget. But we doubt that will happen unless and until the Legislature sharply reins in spending. To date, it’s only poked at the idea.
Funds for schools and the poor or medically fragile have been trimmed. And this week Gov. Chris Gregoire has proposed merging 21 state agencies into nine and eliminating 36 boards and commissions. That, she says, will save the state nearly $30 million over the next two years.
She also wants to pull back on the state’s pension program and hold down health costs.
All are good ideas, but a huge budget deficit will remain.
Part of the problem is that the state has so far been unwilling to change the basic idea of government. The job of government isn’t to provide state workers with good salaries, generous health benefits and cushy retirement plans. Yet all of those things have happened.
For example, Gregoire has said she wanted the state only to pay 74 percent of state workers’ health premiums, requiring them to pay the remaining 26 percent. Now she says the state will pay 85 percent of the premiums over the next two-year budget cycle.
How did this happen? The governor plans to raid two health-care reserve accounts to make up the difference. Reserve accounts: You know – those are the things we’re suppose to keep available in case of unexpected costs.
State officials also have touted a hiring freeze to hold down state costs. Again, what hiring freeze?
A recent story in the News Tribune of Tacoma tells how state agencies already have won exemptions for 1,700 hires since the freeze began in March.
As the analysis by Jordan Scrader shows, the refilled positions are mostly “back-office staff such as managers, secretaries and accountants,” but also include such apparently critical jobs as “janitors and lobbyists, graphic designers and managers of athletic facilities, an oil spill expert and a horse racing regulator.”
Fifth District Rep. Glenn Anderson, R-Fall City, also was one of the few to vote no, saying the Legislature did not go far enough.
“The budget reductions taken will, at best, only marginally begin to help the state’s fiscal situation. … This is a very poor start, considering the even larger budget deficits the state will be facing in January.”
He’s right.
Nibbling around the edges won’t work this time. The Legislature and governor need to take real bites out of the budget. Everything needs to be on the table to solve this crisis.
