As legislators return to Olympia this week, the focus is on filling a $1.2 billion-plus budget hole. It’s a tough assignment, but legislators should keep a sense of perspective.
The challenge ahead for next year is even bigger. When the 2003 Legislature convenes, it could be facing, by at least one calculation, a $3 billion-plus budget headache for the 2003-05 biennium.
That prospect makes it incumbent on the Legislature to be careful and responsible in redrawing its spending plans for the remainder of the current budget. The Legislature cannot rely on optimistic revenue assumptions. It cannot use one-time money sources in the belief that we will get by today, never mind tomorrow.
As Rep. Barry Sehlin of Oak Harbor points out, those tactics — well intended though they were, as ways to protect valuable services — helped get the state into its current bind. Although Sehlin, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, urged caution last year, the approaches seemed fairly reasonable in a period of sustained prosperity. Events, though, have shown the wisdom of Sehlin’s thinking. Now more than ever, it’s time for fiscal discipline, not creativity.
On Tuesday, legislators will hear Gov. Gary Locke’s State of the State address. The governor’s budget-balancing proposals deserve close attention from the Legislature. He has made some helpful, targeted suggestions. And he is working from a bedrock of philosophical strength. He has ruled out new taxes. His intent to continue educational improvements is right. So is the governor’s determination to avoid cuts that harm the state’s most vulnerable citizens. There are some areas of the governor’s budget proposal that demand more scrutiny, however, including its dangerous reliance on drawing down reserves.
The proposals for further cuts in nursing homes appear to be unbearable for even the most solid, respected operations, including Everett’s Bethany. And if nursing home patients relying on public support aren’t the most vulnerable people, who are?
It’s also terrifying to contemplate what the budget cutting may do to the region’s sick poor people and struggling health care providers — everybody from major non-profit hospitals to medical clinics. The Legislature and the governor appear to have little if any awareness of the system’s increasing desperation. The state better figure out the cuts and changes it can make that force as few people as possible to turn to emergency rooms for their care. Even so, there’s an obligation to address how on earth the already overburdened ERs are going to be helped through the grim immediate future.
All that argues for a willingness to re-examine pay raises for general state employees rather than eliminate any more services — and state or contract jobs — than necessary.
To be done well, the budget decisions require time. That means legislators must set themselves an early deadline to approve a transportation improvements package. Legislators then can turn to budget matters with a sense of accomplishment and historical perspective. Budget crises in the early 1980s and 1990s were as tough or tougher. And the state survived. It will this year too.
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