Over the past couple of election cycles, Washington voters have decided, collectively that is, to put Democrats behind the steering wheel of state government.

The governor’s office. The House of Representatives. The Senate. Democrats everywhere you look.

It’s no surprise, then, that the biennial state budget taking shape in Olympia can be expected to have Democratic fingerprints all over it. And Democratic preferences – more than $33 billion worth – all through it.

It’s the will of the majority, wielded in the democratic way, and if Republicans expect a different outcome, the burden is on them to build a case they can sell at the ballot box next year.

In the meantime, though, outnumbered Republicans across the state have a right to know what’s going on with their tax dollars, and why. They are entitled to know what the competing priorities were and to hear the arguments for and against them. That’s the spirit of open government.

Majority Democrats have already turned down a valid Republican proposal that would have been a gesture in the right direction. Republicans in the legislative minority asked that the thick, complicated spending plans be unveiled early enough that both lawmakers and citizens could have a few days to study them and find out what they contained.

Didn’t happen.

Instead, the House passed one partisan spending plan (one Democrat and one Republican crossed party lines) and the Senate passed another (one Democrat crossed over). They rushed them through in the customary fashion, bringing a massive appropriations package to a committee meeting, sending it to the floor, voting on it with minimal opportunity for informed examination except by chosen insiders. We’ll hear more about the details in coming months, and years, but not while there was time to debate them and identify opportunities for improvement.

Presumably, at least the process of ironing out whatever differences exist between the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats could now be conducted in a conference committee where some of the contents of the budget would become clearer. Except that the conference committee won’t be meeting in public, and the minority Republicans, who might force the majority to defend its priorities, won’t be taking part.

This serves the interest of political expediency, but it does not serve the cause of openness or accountability.

In the long term, it doesn’t serve either party’s interests. Having clutched all the power, Democrats must now bear all the responsibility for any shortcomings, to include any fiscal crises that ensue if the economy won’t sustain the approved spending levels – which it is unlikely to do.

Republicans, meanwhile, are using their exclusion from the budgetary inner sanctum as an excuse to criticize in terms of numbers and percentages only, not programs. Where would they cut back? What would they preserve? Can’t say, they say.

Let’s not kid ourselves. This situation is not a reflection of Democrats and Republicans. It is a reflection of legislative majorities and minorities. Both parties have exploited the numbers advantage as their fortunes have shifted. The only party that always loses is the public.