Legislators gather in Olympia Monday for a special session that no one wanted. But the work that lies before them is unavoidable: Cutting about $2 billion out of the current two-year budget to make up for the damage done to tax receipts by a laggard economy.
The choices will be agonizing. Many will be heartbreaking. But they can’t be avoided.
This is when lawmakers need constructive input. Stakeholders who simply demand their program not be cut without offering alternatives will get the response they deserve — silence.
Solutions won’t come easily. Closing some tax exemptions — like the one banks enjoy on first mortgages — tempting as it sounds, is a limited option. It should be done, but it will only put a small dent in the problem.
The governor last week put specifics to the daunting task ahead, laying out her proposals for cuts that would never be considered in anything but a crisis. To mitigate the pain, mostly to K-12 and higher education, she also proposed asking voters in March to approve a three-year, half-cent increase in the state sales tax.
That’s a reasonable and necessary move, in our view, but one that faces a very steep climb in convincing voters who have seen their own budgets take big hits and who remain skeptical that government is spending the money it has wisely and efficiently.
Lawmakers can’t count on added revenue. In a best case, they’ll have to make enough cuts to rebalance the budget, then hope voters will approve buying back some of those cuts. Tough decisions cannot be wished away.
Education stands to take heavy reductions, and its stakeholders, including state Superintendent Randy Dorn, need to get serious about resetting priorities against the current reality of diminished revenue. Just saying no to more cuts isn’t good enough.
One interesting idea came last week from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ross Hunter (D-Medina), who is seeking reaction to a revenue-neutral plan to “swap” local levy funding for state funding of public schools, allowing it to grow over time as property values recover across the state. (Read more at bit.ly/suapim.)
In the short term, cuts to K-12 funding must be equitable. They must ensure that poorer districts don’t take a bigger hit than wealthier ones by gutting levy equalization. That’s the program that puts school districts with low property tax bases — including many in Snohomish County — on a more equal footing by providing them additional state dollars.
Protecting levy equalization may mean cutting four days from the school year (while leaving the number of instructional hours at 1,000). It might also mean increasing class sizes, again. Neither is desirable, but something will have to give.
“Just say no to cuts” isn’t a strategy for success. Education stakeholders, social-service stakeholders, everyone with a stake in the state budget, needs to step up, recognize the current budget reality, and get involved in constructively sorting out the hard choices.
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