Gop Budget Proposal Earns Passing Grade

From a business perspective, the state budget proposed last week in Olympia by House Republicans makes good sense on the whole.

It gives state employees raises that taxpayers can afford - $100 a month.

At the same time, it requires state employees to start picking up about 10 percent of the $330-a-month their health care insurance costs taxpayers.

It reins in spending growth for everescalating government programs.

It cuts 1,000 from the state bureaucracy, paring staff in some places, contracting out work in others, reversing a 10-year trend that added 2,000 employees a year.

But all is not sweetness and light.

State employee unions and the social services industry are squealing foul.

In truth, however, there are parts of the budget document, patterned after the GOP “Contract with Washington,” that reek of political payoffs to big business, special interests, and the wealthy.

Foremost is a 10-percent reduction in the property tax levy. It would set the state back a whopping $187 million in reduced revenues over the next couple years.

For all that, it would save the average homeowner only a paltry 10 or 20 bucks.

But it would provide a huge windfall savings of thousands for many large corporations, big developers, and the rich.

On the other hand, a proposed rollback in the business and occupation (B&O) tax to pre-1993 levels - at a cost of nearly $300 million - wins all-round applause. It’s a boon to businesses large and small, up front, out in the open.

Similarly, even workers would benefit from a $187-million sales-tax exemption for new and expanded manufacturing and processing. This is industrial development. Payroll building.

It remains to be seen whether health care reforms enacted in 1993 survive the Republican steamroller.

While the GOP budget does not directly address health care overhaul, the document assumes a rollback of reforms, and it has the effect of implementing such changes on a broad front.

Likewise, welfare reform.

Whether GOP welfare changes go too far also is open to question. The chief stumbling block for centrists on both sides of the aisle is making unwed teen-age mothers ineligible for benefits under any circumstances. That’s hard.

How about cutting recreational funds for prison inmates?

“Right now we have about $4 million that we are paying for recreational staff at our state penitentiaries,” says Todd Mielke, R-Spokane, member of the House Appropriations Commitee, chaired by Jean Silver, R-Spokane.

Explains Mielke, “Basically these people (recreational specialists) help inmates lift weights, referee volleyball games, and hand out equipment.

“We think that some of the inmates are perfectly capable of doing that,” Mielke continues. “And we don’t know why we have to hire somebody with a four-year degree to do that.”

For years, some cost-conscious folks have wondered why incarcerating criminals in this state runs several thousand dollars higher per prisoner per year than the national average?

“We’re paying about $22,000 a year to house a prisoner vs. the national average of about $15,000 or $17,000,” says Mielke. “One of the ways that we probably can get at that is to take Coyote Ridge correctional center (a new prison near Tri-Cities) and basically put it out for bid. Make this a pilot project.

“If state employees come in and offer the best and lowest price to operate that facility,” the lawmaker says, “then great. If somebody else comes in … we’ll see if we can get at some of the correctional costs.”

The GOP isn’t projecting giant savings at first. Just 10 percent, is all.

A handful of other agencies will be directed to contract competitively for specific services.

Also among the budget highlights, the administrative staff of the Department of Social and Health Services would be slashed by 10 percent. Not even the DSHS argues the need for this.

In summation, the $17.3-billion Republican budget would pare $600 million off Gov. Mike Lowry’s spending package.

It would cut state general-fund taxes by three-quarters of a billion. And it would leave a third of a billion in reserves.

Not half bad.

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