As a state we have invested in creating a highly educated workforce, setting our kids up for success, and protecting the public health and safety of our communities. However, the Great Recession has hit our state hard. We are in the midst of an unprecedented funding crisis, one that calls for innovative solutions to protect the essential public services that make Snohomish County, and our state, a great place to raise our families and build our businesses.
In the past two years we have cut more than $5 billion from funding for schools, health care and services that protect our public health and safety. Despite these drastic cuts we still face another $4.7 billion gap in funding for existing public services over the next two years.
By any measure, the size of the budget challenge — and the suffering it will cause for our communities — is monumental. To give you a sense of what is at stake, $4.6 billion is how much the state will spend on all of our prisons, colleges and universities for the next two years.
The challenges caused by the recession are immense, but there are opportunities as well. With everything on the table, we have a chance to reset how we look at budget issues and reform some of the inefficiencies that have emerged over time.
The billions of dollars we spend each year on tax breaks to special interests is one area that is ripe for reform. As a state we give out more than 500 “tax breaks” that cost us more than $6.5 billion each year, with more added every year. Some of them, like the sales tax exemption on food, make sense, and help all of us. But some have clearly become outdated, costing taxpayers more than they benefit. With others, we don’t even know whether they are working or not.
To date, only 17 percent of our state tax exemptions have ever even been reviewed. We rarely confirm whether tax exemptions actually created jobs or benefitted our state, so we have no idea whether we are getting value for our money.
At a time when we are considering kicking thousands of people off the Basic Health Plan, cramming more kids into classrooms, and drastically reducing critical services for seniors, we need to scrutinize every dollar we dole out on tax exemptions and compare whether the benefits of tax breaks outweigh the benefits of the education and health care services we are proposing to cut.
As an example, the voter-approved Basic Health Plan is currently on the chopping block. This program provides affordable health coverage for 66,000 working families. If we ended outdated and unnecessary tax breaks for Wall Street banks, private jet owners, out of state coal, and elective cosmetic surgery, we could save the Basic Health Plan. These are the types of thoughtful, reasonable trade-offs we should be making, rather than just slashing core services like education or health care.
Current rules in the Legislature make it harder to close tax loopholes and end this special treatment for special interests. The Legislature can cut education and health care with only a simple majority vote, but Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1053 means that a more difficult two-thirds vote is needed before we can close a special tax loophole. These rules don’t make sense. Why should we protect special tax loopholes more than we protect top priorities like education? If anything, it should be easier to close tax loopholes, and harder to cut funding from schools.
I plan to support legislation that will end unjustified tax exemptions to protect funding for our kids and communities, and to bring more accountability and transparency to the tax exemption system. I hope my colleagues across the aisle will work with me, to achieve the two thirds vote needed, to find solutions to our budget crisis that protect Washington families while making our system of taxation fairer and more efficient.
Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, represents the 38th Legislative District.
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