‘People have no clue’ about cuts

OLYMPIA – About those polls and focus groups on taxes that we’ve been hearing about?

Confirmed.

With state lawmakers trying to write a budget that fills an $8.5 billion shortfall, a group of health and education groups is trying to make sure that the solution is more than just budget cuts.

The groups have each kicked in $20,000 to pay for polling and other research to try to figure out which tax hikes would have the best chance with voters.

The group has no name, but contributors include the state hospital association, community clinics, Group Health, the Washington Education Association and SEIU, according to Cassie Sauer, spokeswoman for the hospital association.

“All of us felt that the (state budget) cuts, without revenue, are so devastating, especially to health care and education, that it would be irresponsible, immoral and unconscionable to not consider whether we could raise revenues,” Sauer said.

She wouldn’t share the polling data, but said that the results, gathered over the past month, suggest that the public has no idea how deep state budget cuts could go. When told, she said, voters seem willing to pay for some taxes to offset those cuts.

The groups have aimed for about $2 billion in new money, asking people how they feel about certain cuts and certain taxes. Sin taxes, cigarettes, alcohol, candy, gum seem acceptable, Sauer said.

They didn’t even try asking about a property tax hike, she said.

“I don’t think that’s going to be on the table at all,” Sauer said. People are too concerned about losing their homes, she said.

Voters were somewhat willing to consider a sales tax increase, she said.

Interestingly, when the focus groups were asked what might be cut, the only thing most could cite was the recent decision to close some driver-licensing offices. Among the other potential cuts: many social safety net programs, health coverage for the working poor, deep cuts at state colleges and closing dozens of state parks.

“People have no clue what the cuts are that are being considered,” she said. “They’re aware that there’s a huge budget shortfall, but they don’t know what’s at risk. When they hear what’s at risk, they’re stunned.”

Where the jobs are: Yakima, the Tri-Cities

So says a quarterly survey by the staffing company Manpower, reported recently in Forbes.

“Cities in the Pacific Northwest and Texas have the best employment outlook for April through June, while cities in the Southeast have the weakest,” the magazine reported.

Yakima’s 21 percent projected increase in employment apparently due to a strong apple crop and processing gave it the strongest employment outlook in the country for the second quarter of this year.

Kennewick was No. 2, with 19 percent growth expected. No. 3 was Anchorage, Alaska.

And the worst job prospects? Hello, Florida, hit hard by the construction bubble and then hit again by the tourism slump.

State Rep. John Driscoll whose Republican predecessor, John Ahern, frequently talked about “a great sucking sound” as employers took their jobs to nearby Idaho said he was pleased by the news.

“Well, he indeed heard a sucking noise, but he had the direction wrong,” said Driscoll, D-Spokane. “The good jobs are coming here.”

State Patrol: It’s not a crime to say ‘not one more dime’

A recent organized-labor e-mail warning that lawmakers would get “not one more dime” of support unless they passed a key bill “did not constitute criminal conduct,” the head of the state patrol said this week.

The Washington State Labor Council sparked a furor in the capitol last week when a few lawmakers received what was clearly intended as a strategy memo for fellow union members.

“We looked carefully at the e-mail and at the law,” said State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste. “We could not find a specific criminal statute that was violated.”

Upon learning of the e-mail, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, House Speaker Frank Chopp and the governor issued a joint statement saying that they’d killed the bill and called the cops.

Labor Council President Rick Bender on Tuesday called that “a gross overreaction.”

“This whole thing should never have happened,” he said. Someone mistakenly forwarded the e-mail to several lawmakers, he said, all of whom already supported the bill.

“To characterize this internal e-mail as some kind of threat to legislative leaders – or a possible crime – is absurd,” said Bender.

Another office vacant in the press houses

I’m writing this on a Tuesday, just hours after the final print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer landed on doorsteps.

The demise of the newspaper – an online version will continue – means another empty office in the two old “press houses” on the periphery of the state capitol campus. And it means even fewer people watching Olympia.

Filling some of the gap in coverage will be political blogs, but none are here anything close to full time. And just like talk radio, blogs seem to spend much of their time telling you why they’re right.

Also filling some of that gap will be the army of public-relations people – writers, photographers, videographers – that state government pays to craft its message to the public. But that carefully-chosen language isn’t necessarily straight talk – or the complete picture.

In a depressingly familiar routine after work tonight, the remaining capitol reporters will gather in the P-I’s empty office and drink a toast to the demise of a newspaper that dated back to before the Civil War.

The sign on the office is long gone, as are the drawings by the young daughter of the paper’s last capitol correspondent. All that’s left are boxes of trash that only seem to underscore both the tradition that’s lost and the perception that newspapers are a dying relic: old stationery and maps, a tangle of computer cables, a Department of Agriculture Yearbook from 1907.

Clink.