Thursday Q&A: Mike Ragan, against Initiative 1033

Today’s Q&A is with Mike Ragan of the Washington Education Association. Ragan stopped by my office to talk about why voters should reject Tim Eyman’s latest initiative, 1033, which would limit government spending to a slower growth rate (the rate would be based on population growth plus inflation) and require additional revenues be devoted to rainy day funds and lower property taxes.

Below is Ragan’s unedited interview, where he says I-1033 would be devastating to schools, unfair to lower-income renters and could lead to horrible public safety cuts. After you’re done, check out last week’s Thursday Q&A with Eyman to hear the opposite side. (And next week, don’t miss the Q&A with supporters of Referendum 71.)

Q: Can you explain why you’re opposed to Initiative 1033?
Ragan: We are opposed right off the bat because we’re an education association and we care about children and the quality of public schools and this will have a devastating impact. Tim Eyman says this won’t affect schools, but that’s not true because schools are funded out of the state general fund, which is about 70 percent of our funding.

He claims that there’s a safety valve, that if voters wanted to put the money in, they can. But in reality there’s a levy lid — or a cap — on that.

In the future, as state funds are ratcheted back, there will be less money for schools. It will hurt children and hurt the future of our state.

Q: Can you explain how it will lead to less funding for schools when the formula would allow increases based on population growth and inflation every year?
Ragan: We have a good example for how this works in Colorado. They have a very similar bill. Virtually the same formula that is in this bill. That ratcheted things down, and every time there’s a slight recession, there’s even more in cuts. They could go to local voters and have an election to ask for more money, but what happened is, they started having too many votes. They were coming up with these massive ballots in each election that were very confusing to the voters. This is the reason why we have representative government so these complicated issues can be debated. It is open to the public to participate.

If you don’t like what those people (elected officials) are doing, vote them out of office. We have elections for a reason and we elect officials to represent our voters and our views.

Q: Eyman said in last week’s interview that governments shouldn’t have a problem keeping spending to current levels plus population growth plus inflation. Can you explain why you don’t think that formula will work?
The consumer price index, the way we measure inflation, is based on how average person spends their money. States and counties and cities don’t spend money on the same thing.
Incarceration, public safety, instruction, health care: All those things grow at a faster rate of inflation than the average consumer sees. As we have this steady growth that Eyman talks about, that’s not going to be enough just to maintain where we are. Whenever we do get to a recession, that pulls this back down.

Q: Eyman has said that this gradual growth would prevent funding “roller coasters” — funding programs in good times, cutting drastically in bad times. Can you speak to what things would look like if Washington had been operating for the last five years under the kind of growth limits 1033 imposes?
Ragan: We would still have had massive cuts. What happens then is those cuts are going to be part of the permanent landscape. If we ask people, where would you want children, in a classroom of 22 or 32, they always choose 22. That’s why they voted for classroom size reduction. 728 is essentially gone because of our recession.

1033 would lock those cuts permanently. We would never recover — this is the best we would ever see it. The rate of inflation is always greater than the CPI for education, healthcare, and prisons. What we see now is the best.

OFM says state would be cutting an additional $6 billion, cities and counties would cut $2.89 billion. Those cuts would be in public safety and prisons. What do we do with those people? We’re not going to be able to incarcerate them anymore.

Essentially what Tim Eyman is saying is, let’s kick people out of jail. It’s throw everyone off Basic Health. Basic health would go away. Those people would show up at emergency rooms, and the costs would be passed on to everyone else — you’re not going to save any money on this.

Q: Money over the limit that governments collect would go toward lowering property taxes. What’s your position on that?
Ragan: Our tax system in Washington State is extremely regressive. It’s rated as the most regressive. Working people at the bottom of the income ladder pay the highest amount as a percentage of their income in taxes. If you consider our tax rate overall, it’s pretty low. The wealthy, who own the most property, don’t pay as high a percentage.

What this initiative does is take any savings that they would get from ratcheting down government spending and would give that as a benefit for people who have property. Who are going to benefit the most are people who have property. It’s not the average person who rents. They’re paying property taxes in their rent, but they would not be seeing any of the rebate.

Q: It seems that people hear “government growth based on population plus inflation” and don’t understand how cuts could come from that. Can you explain?
Ragan: The best place to go to find out how this is going to work is to see where it was put in place. In Colorado, it’s the same formula, same threshold. That was put in place during good economic times; we’re doing it at a bad time. In Colorado, growth fell, business community is appalled. In middle school, sports are expensive or gone, music and art are gone. Fees to pay for extracurricular programs are up. There are fees for buying books. The business community is united in opposition.

When Colorado did have a recession, this made it worse. Trying to come out of the recession, they have it far worse. In the other mountain states, job growth was above 7 percent up until recession. In Colorado, it was 0.2 percent. That’s the effect.

Tim Eyman likes to say this is different, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can call it a turkey. And this really is a turkey.

If it was a good idea, you would see elected officials signing on. Cities and counties are opposing 1033. It’s a one-size-fits-all formula that will hurt the state.

Q. How would the state look different if 1033 passes?
Ragan: If the cuts that have been made now are being made permanent by this, it will be devastating. And as I said earlier, the type of services governments pay for inflate at a greater rate. We’ve already had OFM do studies to say they’re going to have to cut more. If we happen to have another recession in five years, that will drop what counties are allowed to spend and it will start all over again at much lower rate, so what will happen is things like children’s vaccinations, healthcare? Tim likes to say hospitals are not going to be affected, but they’d expect to lose almost 9,000 people over five years.

911 Emergency is through local and county governments. If this goes into effect, just hope that you don’t get a disconnected message if you have an emergency. Or if you call, they say we’re sorry there’s no one here to help.

Q: You’re saying 911 services would actually be closed?
Ragan: In Colorado, they’re cutting basic safety services. Right now in Colorado, 40 percent of the roads need repair. And there are over 100 bridges that are rated unsafe. And that’s from the ones where they still have inspectors, that’s had to be cut back, too.

Chambers of commerce all over the state are opposed to this. They know investing in infrastructure means something to business. As I mentioned earlier, that’s an indication of how business is faring.

Q: Anything else?
Ragan: Vote no.

Tags: I-1033, Mike Ragan, WEA