Fiscal year starts with fresh cuts
OLYMPIA – Happy New Year.
New fiscal year, that is. Wednesday marked the first day of Washington’s fiscal year, triggering a broad slate of budget cuts that state lawmakers approved earlier this spring.
Among the fallout:
•The state’s poison center, cut 37 percent, is warning that callers to its hotline can expect to spend more time on hold, will initially be routed to a phone tree, and will be asked for a $30 credit-card payment before a staffer answers questions regarding pet poisonings.
•Health insurance costs are likely to rise next year for state workers, including hundreds in and around Spokane. The most popular plan, the Uniform Medical Plan, is proposed to rise from $82 a month for a family to $126. For individuals, the cost would rise from $26 to $41. Deductibles, co-payments and other costs are also slated to rise.
•Basic Health, state-subsidized health insurance for the working poor, will boost premiums from an average of $36 a month to $61, also starting next year.
•The state Capitol visitors center, where volunteers hand out maps, brochures and advice to thousands of visiting tourists a year, is closing.
•In state buildings, the trash will now be emptied only twice a week, and the carpets cleaned just once a year.
If you know of other cuts kicking in, particularly locally, please contact me at richr@spokesman.com or (360) 664-2598. I’d like to do a story about the changes.
M’s aren’t the only ones with bobbleheads and big-spending fans
Retired Woodinville financial adviser Mike Dunmire’s been a lifeline for initiative promoter Tim Eyman, pouring a steady cash infusion into Eyman’s signature-gathering (and income-producing) funds.
So for Eyman’s critics, it’s become a bit of a parlor game to try to predict the waxing and waning of Dunmire’s support. Is Dunmire tiring of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year bankrolling Eyman?
It doesn’t seem so. Dunmire attended a dinner Friday at which Eyman, a king of self-promotion, presented bobblehead figurines of himself, awarded to the highest bidders. (Winning price: $1,000 for two.)
Dunmire clearly remains a big fan. He praised Eyman for having “his finger on the pulse of the electorate better than anyone else in the state” and being “able to identify those key pro-taxpayer, pro-freedom, limit-government-power issues that resonate most with voters.”
As I said on my blog, where I posted more, “comments are welcome.” Go to www.eyeonolympia.com.
Answering your open-government questions
Are you allowed to record a public meeting? Do you need permission? Can you photograph a public record?
The state attorney general’s office has launched a Web site, titled “Unredacted,” that answers questions about government records and the rules for open meetings. It’s at www.atg.wa.gov/ unredacted.aspx.
The answers: Yes, you can record public meetings without needing to ask permission, so long as you’re not disruptive. The same thing applies to public records.
Powerball vs. Megamillions
Lawmakers this past spring approved Washington’s diving into another big-money lottery called Powerball. Washington now has a similar game, MegaMillions, but state lottery officials figured that adding Powerball would mean more than $11 million more for the state treasury over the next two years.
The problem: The 31 states that offer Powerball – including Idaho – decided that they didn’t want to play ball. The “Powerball Consortium,” as lottery officials put it in a report this week, voted not to allow Washington or two other Megamillions states to offer Powerball.
Gambling votes are always dicey in Olympia, and lawmakers were startled to say yes and then be turned down.
“It was something of a surprise to all of us that we weren’t further along in this process,” Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, told the lottery folks.
Christian lawyers group opens hotline for referendum ‘retaliation’
The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund today launched a free phone hotline and Web site to gather accounts of threats or other harassment of people gathering signatures for Referendum 71. The ballot measure asks voters to throw out a new law granting state-registered domestic partners, including same-sex couples, most of the same rights as spouses under state law.
“If you have been threatened or suffered retaliation after signing an R-71 petition, or someone prevented you from signing an R-71 petition, please tell us what happened,” the Web site says, urging people to fill out a “legal intervention request form.”
“Washington voters shouldn’t have to choose between being involved in the democratic process and opening themselves up to possible acts of retaliation as a result of having their personal information posted on the Web,” ADF senior counsel Gary McCaleb said in a press release announcing the hotline and Web site.
The group maintains that the new law makes marriage and domestic partnerships “effectively the same except in name,” a premise that legislative proponents deny.
The ADF’s move is partly in response to whosigned.org, a group that’s vowing to publicize the names of anyone who signs the petitions to put the measure on the fall ballot. Opponents are also running a “decline to sign” online pledge in hopes of preventing social conservatives from getting the roughly 150,000 signatures they’ll need to trigger a statewide vote.