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Editorial: Budget fight amounts to $200 million question

Sun., March 18, 2012

Senate Republicans last week improved on an earlier version of their proposed state budget, but there is little sign they are getting much of a buy-in from Democrats.

GOP.2 retains the strong points of the original version:

One, it does not push a $330 million school payment into the next biennium, where it would fester until legislators reconvene next year.

Two, it requires the state to adopt four-year budget planning, which will help avoid repeats of the present shortfall of almost $1 billion.

Three, it addresses a persistent problem with underfunded pension programs. Granted, they achieve this in part by skipping a $140 million payment this year, but that is coupled with delaying early retirement for future state employees. Savings will be dedicated to catching up with arrears on underfunded plans.

Four, it abandons the fiction that Initiative 728, intended to reduce class sizes, will be funded anytime soon. That trims almost $1 billion from the next biennium budgeting.

The plan also consolidates health insurance purchasing for state school districts, an expense initially but a future money-saver. It provides for about $437 million in reserves.

The major strength of the new plan is its retreat from reduction in K-12 and higher education funding. Washington universities and students have suffered plenty in recent years. To offset prior cuts, they have admitted more out-of-state students and issued fewer tuition waivers, a $38 million sum the first Republican budget appropriated for other uses.

That was a bad idea, mercifully short-lived.

A good idea whose time has come, but remains a deal-killer, is charter schools. Gov. Chris Gregoire has said she will veto any such provision. It’s not a bargaining chip, it’s a provocation.

The Democrats are much provoked already.

In the Senate, they lost their majority when three moderate “roadkill” Democrats bolted under the banner of sustainable budgeting. The move blindsided Majority Leader Lisa Brown, and the new Republican budget allegedly bypassed bipartisan talks Gregoire was holding in her office. The state’s chief executive is so exercised she is threatening to veto legislation sitting on her desk. So as to … ?

Republicans, with one hand on the steering wheel, are not letting go. Better drive carefully.

Restoring those education cuts meant surgery elsewhere, and among the bleeding are Washington’s most vulnerable; 14,500 on the Disability Lifeline program who will be cut off in June, for example. Other reductions affect food programs and access to health care. Hospitals will be absorbing many of the reductions as the poor seek aid in emergency rooms.

Earlier cutbacks are already leaving many to their own meager devices.

In a $30 billion budget, the standoff between the parties boils down to about $200 million, the difference between the pension payment Republicans are willing to withhold and the delay in school payments preferred by Democrats stalling for time in the hope that an improving economy will produce more tax revenue.

There is room for a deal – sacrificing a slice of the reserves, perhaps – but not if the parties continue to talk past each other.