Revenue shortfall perhaps in future

When Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire put her pen to the state’s $26 billion budget for the next two years, she declared, “Your future just got better.”

That encouraging note fits well with most of the accomplishments the governor attributes to the biennial spending package: More access to education from kindergarten through college. Health care for low-income children. Better resources for curbing child abuse. Services that come to the assistance of the poor, the disabled and the aged — populations who are often disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

Those are promising achievements that deserve universal applause.

Even so, whether the future really got demonstrably better is speculation that can’t be confirmed until, well, the future. And the future will roll around in two short years. By then the state may be facing another substantial revenue shortfall.

If so, budget writers will be without the one-time funding sources that have been used to pay about $1 billion of the 2005-07 budget’s cost. That’s when we’ll find out if the state can sustain the level of services now being celebrated or will have to come up with new taxes or severe cuts or will have to concoct yet another round of one-time budget innovations. Maybe the future will be better, maybe it will be more unpredictable.

If there was a time when the state tax base was appropriately balanced to meet a reasonable level of state needs while apportioning the tax burden fairly and efficiently among multiple sectors of the economy, that balance has been disrupted by a rash of spontaneous events — a court ruling here, an initiative there — usually to reduce tax collections.

Lawmakers respond creatively, as they did this year. For example, they take another helping of tobacco and alcohol taxes, which incur minimal political backlash but which in time will reduce consumption so much that the revenue gains will be lost.

Or they grab some of the tobacco suit settlement money awarded to the state. Or they defer some pension plan contributions.

Such strategies put the state at risk. But lawmakers will be facing the same choices in 2007 unless they face up to challenges they find easier to ignore. Curbing spending, for instance, especially the generous health-care benefits for public employees. And keeping public assistance programs in proportion to those available in other states. In addition, the state tax system needs to be looked at as a whole and dealt with comprehensively. Piecemeal adjustments only throw the structure out of balance and make us vulnerable to shifts in the economy.

Yes, it takes political courage to address these measures, but if the Legislature demonstrates the necessary boldness between now and 2007, the future might truly get better.