In Olympia, 2011 will be a year of painful retrenchment. That doesn’t mean it can’t be without positive outcomes.
Closing a $5.7 billion gap between planned spending and projected revenue will require choices that would make even Scrooge wince. Some people who depend on state services for good reasons will go without them, at least until other ways of providing them can be figured out. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean government will be the provider.) Short-term cuts that may be necessary in areas like health services and early learning could lead to greater expenses down the road.
But the budget crisis will also force a healthy examination of how each of the many layers of state government do business. A more effective government can and should emerge.
With billions to cut and tax increases essentially off the table at voter insistence, any state agency or institution that doesn’t seriously and creatively address ways to become more efficient and cost-effective ought to be slated for extinction.
Consolidating agencies that provide similar or complementary services (the departments of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife are often mentioned as an example of a possible merger) won’t fill much of the budget hole, but if it saves money, it probably ought to be done.
Higher education is one of those areas where further cuts will quickly become counterproductive, given its role in fueling economic recovery and future prosperity. But its governance is considered by many to be unwieldy and inefficient. Surely great minds in the higher ed community have thought over the years of money-saving ways to streamline the system. If institutional inertia has kept innovative ideas at bay in the past, now is the time for leaders to blow away such barriers.
Gov. Chris Gregoire has called for existing collective bargaining agreements with state employee unions to be renegotiated. Given the stubbornly high unemployment rate throughout the state, a strident stand by union leaders won’t draw much public sympathy. If ever there were a time for union leaders to be an aggressive part of the budget solution, if only to save as many member jobs as possible, this is it.
The reality facing state lawmakers is stark. Good people defending good programs are leaving meetings with the governor in tears, and the process of cutting and eliminating programs is just getting started. The screaming and shouting is under way.
But defending the status quo won’t work in this environment. State government is going to be smaller, and must become more efficient.
Yelling isn’t going to help. What will? Earnest people with good ideas for making government work better.
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