No, perhaps it won’t quite be open season on sacred cows. But yes, most everything is on the table when the 2011 Legislature convenes next month.
Olympia must continue standing up to a state, national and worldwide economy that has been stubbornly falling down for three years. Since we left town last spring, these near-nuclear winter fiscal times have slashed ever deeper into the revenue and budget. It seems that every new report and forecast brings the same old storm and stress. As I write these lines, it’s possible that we’ll be called into special session before the regular 105-day legislative meeting kicks off January 10th.
The task ahead is best summed up in a couple of nouns – jobs and the budget. Or maybe a couple of verbs – prioritize and cut. Yet our prime budget directive these days really isn’t much different from years past. It comes down to economic development: the creation of dependable, family-wage jobs for Washington families and communities.
According to November’s revenue forecast, the general fund has taken a $1.36 billion hit since June. The governor ordered $520 million in across-the-board reductions a few months ago. Still, we must find another several hundred million dollars in cuts just to make it to June 30th (the rest of the 2009-2011 biennium). After that, the Office of Financial Management is talking about yet another shortfall of $5.7 billion for the next two-year budget period. Why? Well, on top of the “Great Recession,” our smaller revenues confront an inconvenient reality:
* Hard times mean bigger public-assistance caseloads.
* Growing preschool and K-12 populations mean larger school enrollments.
* Stronger demands for public safety mean more crowded jails and prisons.
The governor is working with the four legislative caucuses to corral this runaway economic beast. I think we need to look at everything, including education. We cannot simply shred the social-safety net and walk away. Too many people depend on the state for basic subsistence for us to simply cut them off. Even if you look at this thing from the cold perspective of the gray science, plain old economics, the cost in other areas would be enormous. These are the areas that common sense and common decency say are essential in a civilized society – courts, jails, prisons and hospital-emergency rooms to name a few.
To meet this challenge, I ask my Republican colleagues to join in creating a truly bipartisan budget. How about some genuine support on their part for either repealing – or at least suspending for the rest of the biennium – tax breaks identified by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee and the Citizen Commission for Performance Measurement of Tax Preferences (see table below).
What we need, what our state needs from the GOP is some good-faith support for the common good. Whether it’s in a special session this month or in the 2011 regular session, we need minority-party votes enough to reach the two-thirds majority requirement set down in Initiative 1053. Frankly, any refusal on their part will show loudly and clearly how far they’ll go to protect their sacred cows. Unprecedented times like today call for shared sacrifices from everyone – including portions of the Washington business community – to help us all get through. How can we simply dump the biggest part of the burden of this awful economic stretch on our children, schools and teachers; or on our economically hard-hit fellow citizens, or on our police and fire departments? That cannot be anyone’s definition of a shared sacrifice.
State Rep. Jim Moeller (D-Vancouver) is the Deputy Speaker Pro Tempore of the House of Representatives. He is a chemical-dependency counselor for Kaiser Permanente in his professional life outside of the Legislature.
Published in the Vancouver Business Journal / Dec. 10, 2010