When two King County Council members discussed their budget problems on KIRO radio a couple of weeks ago, someone called to say that all they had to do is cut out waste, fraud and abuse.
Waste, fraud and abuse have a bad name. It’s time to revive them. I propose a one-year waste-fraud-abuse tax for fiscal 2004. In 2005, the tax would disappear, and governments would cut fraud. In ’06, they would cut abuse, and in ’07, they would cut waste. After three years of fiscal responsibility, the tax would be revived for ’08; then three years of cost-cutting would start again.
Of course, none of us really knows how much waste, fraud or abuse exists in state and local government. The way to find out is to start performance audits, which would tell us what we get for our money.
The state auditor has repeatedly called for such a power, but the Legislature annually rejects bills to do it.
Could this be the year? I doubt it.
The election’s over, what now?
The election is finally over. We know that enough Seattle residents would like the monorail to move the project ahead.
It didn’t take a vote to show that people like a lot of Sound Transit. They’ve voted with their behavior to support the Sounder trains and ST express buses, but votes indicate that they don’t like the proposed “light-rail line to nowhere,” going from downtown Seattle to a mile or two of the airport.
So, it’s time for supporters of both plans to swallow their pride and start working together.
They need recognize that one of the stops on the first proposed monorail line is near the King Street station, where Sounder trains arrive and depart, and plan similar connections between the monorail and bus lines.
More roads not the answer
Bellevue Square owner Kemper Freeman wants to solve the Puget Sound region’s transportation problems with more highways, adding to Interstate 5, I-405 and the bridges across Lake Washington.
Rather than help people get to and from shopping centers, it’s time to stop encouraging highway use and start building neighborhoods, encouraging people to get off the highway by spending money on sidewalks and giving tax incentives for retailers and professionals that locate where people live.
Can’t the feds do a budget?
The 107th Congress finished a couple of weeks ago, having passed a bill to create a Department of Homeland Security but not passing a budget to support that department or any other department except the Department of Defense.
One of Congress’ main responsibilities is to pass 13 budget bills. Two months into the fiscal year, Congress was 12 short. The House and Senate adjourned for the year, leaving most of the federal government operating on a continuing resolution that leaves each department and agency with the same level of support it had last year, whether it needs more or can do with less.
A couple of decades ago Congress, consistently unable to pass appropriation bills by July 1, moved the beginning of the fiscal year to Oct. 1, but it consistently has been unable to meet that deadline.
Now, we are in the third month of the fiscal year and a month away from the opening of a new Congress with only a small fraction of a federal budget.
Evan Smith is Enterprise Forum editor.
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