Our view: Haste makes waste
Several serious questions hover over a proposal from a handful of Washington legislators regarding the biennial state budget. Led by Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, lawmakers have introduced a bill and a prospective constitutional amendment that would give them, their colleagues and the public a reasonable chance to examine the spending package.
The questions?
Why isn’t this already done? Routinely?
Why does it take legislative action to require that the citizen Legislature wait at least five days after the two-year spending plan is revealed before voting on it?
Why, in a state that prides itself as a pioneer in open government, is such a plan unlikely to succeed?
On the surface, it may appear that the 105-day legislative session, which is now half over, is devoted to everything but the budget, which will likely be the Legislature’s last big accomplishment in April.
In fact, from beginning to end, the session is all about the budget. An abundance of measures involving policy and programs claims considerable attention from the representatives and senators in Olympia. Those measures move from committee to the floor, from one chamber to the other. Some fall by the wayside, some advance to the governor’s desk. They may not contain spending provisions, but whatever burdens they place on, or remove from, state agencies have a fiscal impact.
Meanwhile, the relentless competition for limited public dollars is an ongoing tussle, some of it waged in rushed open hearings of the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees, and much of it finessed in less visible arenas.
The state general fund budget, of course, is the spending blueprint that prioritizes how the taxpayers’ limited money will be used. The package offered by the governor in the early days of the session was only a proposal. The governor proposes, as the saying goes, and the Legislature disposes.
Once the final document emerges from its murky birthing, it will be thick and complicated and impossible to grasp at a glance. You don’t tally up nearly $30 billion of expenditures in a few neat pages.
And too often, the budget decision happens hastily in the final days, sometimes the final hours, of the session, and a relative few key lawmakers and staffers know everything that’s in it. Trusting lawmakers put their faith in caucus leaders for reliable advice about how to vote.
Alexander and his allies have offered House Joint Resolution 4216 and House Bill 1834 which, together, would oblige the Legislature to do one simple thing with the state’s operating, capital and transportation budgets – give interested people, including the public, a five-day period to study the proposals before the House and Senate could bring them to a vote.
Those five days might provide nothing more than reassurance to wary citizens, not to mention lawmakers, that the budget contains no surprising inclusions or omissions. Or the examination period might afford an opportunity to fix oversights. It could prevent mistakes as well as mischief.
Sound like a good idea? Actually, it sounds like an obvious idea.