The curtain rises Monday on a 2011 Washington Legislature where hard questions are sure to elicit painful answers.
Legislators must adopt a state spending plan that covers a $1.1 billion deficit through June 30. Then, write a budget that trims another $4.6 billion, perhaps even more, through mid-2013.
Every state program is up for scrutiny, Olympia leaders pledge. The budget ax will be relentless and will spare few causes or constituencies.
There’s no salve for the wounds, either.
Voters emphatically rejected tax hikes on sales of soda or sugary snacks and on high-income earners that would have boosted the state’s cash flow.
Further, they restored a two-thirds majority Legislature vote on tax or fee proposals, months after Democratic leaders in hot pursuit of scarce dollars had voided Tim Eyman’s previous tax-limits measure.
With no new revenue source and Washington’s economy still moribund, legislators must produce an “all cuts” budget on which accounting tricks and stop-gap measures just won’t do.
Really.
“We’ve used all the gimmicky kind of stuff. We’re at a point where we’ll truly have to mean it when we say we’ll have to reduce spending,” said veteran Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield.
Having long raised alarm over a bloated budget, Zarelli is among fiscal hawks eager to sift through state priorities and jettison unsustainable programs. “We really have to. There is no access to new revenue,” he said.
That’s hard for Democrats to absorb, but those in Southwest Washington concede it’s time to face the music.
“All the easy cards have been played, right?” All that’s left are the hard ones,” said Rep. Jim Jacks, 49th District Democrat from Vancouver starting his sophomore term.
“The choices are between catastrophic, and merely horrible,” Jacks predicted. “There will be a lot of people frustrated by whatever happens.”
Governor hates it
The wailing has already begun, of course.
Starting with Gov. Chris Gregoire, who said Dec. 15 when she issued her own, two-year spending plan, “I hate my budget. I hate it because in some places, I don’t even think it’s moral.”
Salient points made that day:
• About 60 percent of Washington’s budget is hands-off: It’s constitutionally protected funding of basic education and other needs, federal Medicaid requirements, bond payments and such.
• That leaves 40 percent, about $14 billion, from which the $4.6 billion in reductions must come. Meaning, legislators must slice one of every three dollars the state now spends by choice.
And, what choices they are.
Gregoire’s budget blueprint takes a knife to a fast-fraying social safety net.
Her plan eliminates the Basic Health Program that helps to insure 66,000 poorer state residents, and the Children’s Health Program for uninsured youths.
It ends cash grants and medical care for the Disability Lifeline program that helps many unemployable adults who don’t receive federal aid, and ends a food stamp program.
It jacks up tuition rates at Washington’s four-year universities another 11 percent, 10 percent at community colleges, while it cuts higher education operating funds by 4.2 percent, likely to reduce faculty positions and students’ class options.
For K-12 public schools: An average 6.3 percent cut in levy equalization payments that help property tax-poor districts, including most in Clark County, and suspension of voter-backed classroom initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Washington’s $200 million-plus share of federal money aimed at saving teaching jobs? Plucked away, to plug budget gaps elsewhere.
State agencies and boards are to be merged, or shuttered. State parks lose half their state income, left to raise higher fees or shut down. State corrections take a hit, including closure of the McNeil Island facility, and 19 other state buildings are put up for sale.
Separately, the governor negotiated a 3 percent pay cut for 90 percent of state employees, through unpaid furloughs. All state workers will pay 33 percent more for health care premiums, covering 15 percent of cost compared to 12 percent previously.
‘Swallow a bitter pill’
All that’s a start, but not nearly enough to satisfy Zarelli and the GOP — or Sen. Craig Pridemore, Democrat from Vancouver’s 49th District.
Pridemore, Zarelli and Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, serve on the State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council and are privy to experts’ best reckoning.
Pridemore said Gregoire’s budget cuts only $3 billion, while it taps a state reserve fund and simply freezes the two school initiatives. He also suspects the deficit will top $5 billion before real economic recovery takes root and calls current, cautious revenue forecasts that hint at better times “soft.”
His prescription: Swallow a bitter pill now and kill many programs, however well-intentioned. Make deep, lasting reforms, rather than “suspend” or back-load future obligations.
“I don’t want to do this again in 2013,” Pridemore said. “We have to make hard choices. Citizens need to realize that, too.”
Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, notes Washington state’s per-capita budget deficit outpaces even that in California.
“We’re facing a fundamental breakdown in the delivery of services to citizens,” Benton said. “I’m not sure everybody is really grasping the seriousness. This is really a horrific problem we face.”
“Nobody should be asking for anything, at this point,” Zarelli said of traditional lobbying for pet projects or programs. “Keep your ‘ask’ to yourself this year and help us manage what we have to do, rather than what we’d like to do,” he said.
Jacks, the Vancouver Democrat, now greets most visitors with a grim refrain: “We’ve been saying ‘No’ a lot. We have a lot of practice in that,” he said.
‘A long, hard slog’
Uncommon teamwork was displayed during a one-day legislative special session called by Gregoire last month. Legislators quickly passed a bipartisan list of $588 million in immediate budget reductions.
Don’t expect a replay. Despite public wishes for legislators to shed partisanship and produce lasting reforms in state government, Olympia isn’t geared for a peaceful revolution, a few members said — without apology.
“I would love to believe that we’re going to go up there and sing ‘Kumbaya’ together,” said Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver. “But, this is my fifth term and I haven’t seen it yet, in good times or bad.”
The Legislature is designed for vigorous, sometimes nasty but ultimately, transparent, debate, Moeller maintained. He predicts a “long, hard slog.”
Rep. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, a 15th District stalwart, agreed.
“Partisanship and politics is important for our full debate,” Chandler said. “Impending doom” provides impetus for new solutions and compromise, but answers shouldn’t, and won’t, come swiftly, he said.
“This has to be a long session, a session where everyone needs to participate,” he said.
‘Wish list’
Legislators do have modest suggestions on how to perk up Washington’s tepid economy, which would go a long way toward restoring fiscal order.
To Orcutt, who has urged Gregoire to freeze any new business and environmental regulations, it means “get out of the way.”
Zarelli said legislators’ appropriate task is to “get our house in order,” then help business interests “find each other” to incubate growth.
Rep. Tim Probst, D-Vancouver, will pitch long-term plans to reward school districts that reduce dropouts, to foster new student internships in business and to better track the condition of Washington state’s middle class.
Lawmakers have other to-do lists that wouldn’t break the bank:
• Moeller hopes to help clear confusion on medical marijuana to satisfy law authorities and advocates alike — “to define what is medicine and what is not medicine,” he said.
• Jacks wants to draft a “more equitable” split of commercial and sport fishing limits, he said.
• Pridemore will lead a crackdown on political action committees that skirt Washington campaign spending disclosure laws.
How long before legislators quit stalling, or bickering, and get down to the budget end game?
Moeller said it will be when majority Democrats realize Republicans won’t give ground on business tax breaks.
Zarelli counters, “It’s going to take some time for the Democrats to embrace the task at hand, instead of wishful thinking or hoping for blue sky (again).”
And so, the new session, and its gamesmanship, begins.
“I love that it starts, and I love that it ends,” Jacks said.
