January 14, 2011
Legislative Update
Happy New Year and welcome to the 2011 legislative session! This is the first of my electronic newsletters; I hope you find these “e-memos” useful. Feel free to share them. Using email saves printing and postage associated with the traditional paper newsletter and enables me to send information more often. Of course, I welcome your comments and questions.
It’s been a rough several years, fueled by the worst worldwide recession since the Great Depression. Trends are heading in the right direction, but it is going to be a slow climb as our economy rebounds.
As we look at the state general fund budget–the one we usually talk about, we see that:
? 43% goes to public schools
? 8% goes to higher education
? 18% goes to social and health services
? 15% goes to the Health Care Authority; Washington state is the largest health insurance purchaser in the state
Of the $35 billion general fund monies; $21 billion is tied to constitutional or federal mandates. In other words, 60% of the budget is “protected.”
? K-12 education 37%
? Debt service 6%
? Medicaid/foster care 16%
? Judiciary 1%
$14 billion (40%) is not “protected.”
? Higher education 8%
? Other human services 17%
? Other K-12 6%
? Corrections 5%
? General government 4%
At the same time Washington is growing; growing enough that we gained a 10th congressional district; growing enough that North Thurston Public Schools has 600 additional students–400 of them not anticipated when the district’s budget was adopted.
State employees have been hit hard and will most likely take another hit. This will have a dramatic impact on our local economy. With no wage increases since 2008, and NOT counting the 3% reduction state employees will be hit with in the 2011-13 biennium, they will see the following monthly reductions:
$139 in temporary layoffs/furloughs
$147 increase in health premiums
$32 increase in retirement payments
$318 + out-of-pocket health care costs
With out-of-pocket health care costs, the average state employee takes a hit of $4416 to $5016 in reductions and extra costs, and then will get an additional 3% salary reduction. I imagine there will be a lot fewer major purchases and less expendable purchases.
The public work force, including teachers will go down by 10,000 from 2007-09 to 2011-13.
Examples of programs potentially going away or facing big cuts:
? Eliminate K-4 class size reductions;
? Eliminate the highly capable or gifted education program;
? Continue to suspend Initiative 728–class size reduction and extended student learning time;
? Continue to suspend Initiative 732–COLAs for teachers;
? Tuition increases of 11% per year at UW and WSU–on top of 14% current biennium (9% at TESC and 10% at SPSCC);
? Reduce support for higher education by 4.2%;
? Cut 2,800 needy students from the college work study program;
? Eliminate the Basic Health Plan that offers subsidized health insurance to 60,000;
? Eliminate the Children’s Health Program that provides health care to 27,000 children whose citizenship has not been documented;
? Eliminate state food assistance that provides $46 million to purchase commodities for food banks;
? Eliminate school-based medical service for poor children as part of their education program;
? Eliminate state funding for family planning grants;
? Close McNeil Island Corrections Center;
? Close Maple Lane School in Rochester;
? Reduce corrections staff in headquarters, prisons, and community supervision;
? Reduce funding to juvenile courts;
? Reduce funding for agricultural fairs;
? Eliminate funding for the State Tourism Office.
Transportation and the Capital Budget
Transportation is not any better. As construction declines from $4.2 billion to $422 million over the next four years, DOT will lay off 800 engineering and other technical staff. Ferry rates will have to go up 10% in 2011 and will need a fuel surcharge on top of that. Still one mid-day run on the Bremerton ferry will be eliminated as will one early afternoon and late evening on the Point Defiance run. All runs will see fewer runs and less capacity.
Additionally, the Capital Budget proposes to demolish the GA Building and the parking garage because it is not cost effective to repair or maintain them. They will be replaced by vacant land.
My plans
Some of the bills I will be working on this session include:
? Reorganization and increased consolidated services in the state’s 295 school districts;
? Legislation to create innovative programs and/or schools in local school districts;
? Make vote by mail statewide by mandating that the only county with poll voting follow the lead of the rest of the state. Pierce County spent an additional $150,00 for 28,000 voters to go to the polls–out of more than 300,000 voters;
? Advocate changes to the state’s outdated and broken tax structure.
I will provide more information on these proposals in a future e-memo.
This is scheduled to be a 105 day legislative session, with the Legislature’s primary job to adopt a budget for the July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2013 biennium.
In This Issue
The Budget
Contact
MAIL
438B Legislative Building
PO Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504
PHONE
(360) 786-7992
1 (800) 562.6000 toll free
1 (800) 635-9993 TTY-TDD (hearing impaired)
EMAIL
sam.hunt@leg.wa.gov
WEBSITE
My home page