Tomorrow is the Primary — and that means you need to have your ballot in by 8 p.m. That leaves you a little less than 33 hours to watch the Video Voters’ Guides, read about the candidates, fill in your ballot and get it postmarked.*

And don’t miss TVW’s Primary coverage tomorrow night — starting at 8 p.m., Jessica Gao will host a very special edition of The Impact. The Impact will be live at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m. with results, analysis, interviews and more. Don’t miss it.

*Pierce County voters can also, of course, vote in person at the polls.

Tags: elections, primary

Gov. Chris Gregoire just started her press conference on the next steps for the state budget. You can watch live on TVW now and follow-along here.

She said recent federal legislation will kick in more than $200 million for education. “With the receipt of this money we were able to dodge a bullet,” she said, but the budget remains “under stress.”

She said in the spring there were positive economic signs, but “we must continue to be fiscally responsible” as the economy takes a step back. “It’s pouring down rain and so we have exhausted our rainy day fund.”

“Today I’m laying out four directives” to address the step back, she said. “I am directing my state agencies to prepare for across-the-board cuts from 4 to 7 percent,” effective Oct. 1 and based on the September forecast.

“Second, I’m asking agencies to prepare for a supplemental budget,” she said, by looking at $500 million of cuts from the current budget. She wants a supplemental budget ready for the Legislature in January.

Third, she said, she wants to prepare for the 2011-2013 budget, with a projected $3 billion shortfall. To that end, she’s asking agency heads to submit proposals for what they could cut.

“Finally, I’m taking action today to reduce spending in our welfare-to-work program” by more than $50 million. She said enrollment has surged in that program but federal funding has remained flat. “Fewer families will qualify” for extension of benefits, programs to help families stay in jobs and more. “Cuts are really just not a bunch of numbers.”

As to that 4 percent cut, she said here’s what it might look like:

Department of Revenue laying off staff, Department of Corrections closing another prison, hospice services eliminated, levy equalization reduced, 9,000 students turned away from community and technical colleges.

Gregoire shared stories of several unemployed workers in the state of Washington, including a 62-year-old in a retraining program whose unemployment benefits ran out, leaving him unable to afford gas to get to class.

Gregoire said the committee to transform Washington’s budget has heard from many people across the state. She’s challenging them to bring forward transformative ideas. “We have no choice. We must transform our state government. We must, however, in the process maintain those values” of the state. “We will continue to find ways to deliver services as efficiently as we can… we will survive this crisis and we will be stronger for it,” she said.

Now, questions. Gregoire was asked why wait for October to make across-the-board cuts? Why not make a smaller cut now?

Gregoire said the state’s economist, Arun Raha, can’t predict yet what the September forecast will say. She said the state needs to get ready for cuts and must know how big the problem is before implementing cuts. “I want them to be ready effective Oct. 1 but I’ll give them a specific number” after the September forecast.

What would a 7 percent across-the-board cut mean? “We’re going to see the end of programs, not a cutting of a program but the end of programs. No more podiatry, no more dental services, no more vision services,” she said of state healthcare programs.

What about schools? They have to have teacher contracts before school starts — how do you make cuts after that? Gregoire said schools will also lose levy equalization money, so many schools will get hit two ways.

Tags: Budget, Gregoire

Gov. Chris Gregoire will announce tomorrow at 11 a.m. what her next steps for the state budget are, and TVW will be live with the press conference.

Gregoire will discuss her budget plans for both the short- and long-term — including the 2011-2013 biennium, according to the press release.

Tune in tomorrow — both here on the blog and by watching TVW.

Tags: Budget, Gregoire

Brad Shannon has a report on state revenue collections, and it’s not good news: Collections are down about $24 million in a month.

The good news: Collections are up about 4.6 percent over the same time last year. Go here to read the full story.

The next Economic and Revenue Forecast will be in September.

Tags: revenue collection

Gov. Chris Gregoire said she’s taken herself out of the running for the solicitor general job — the job Elena Kagan left to join the Supreme Court.

Gregoire said she was humbled to be mentioned, but that she couldn’t leave the state at this point. Read more here.

Tags: Gregoire, solicitor general

Lots of people have questions about health care reform. One of the most active conversations on the topic is among senior citizens. What’s changing about the so-called “donut hole” for prescription drug benefits? Is Medicare taking the brunt of the cuts to fund the health care reform law? How is the Medicare Advantage plan – run through private health insurance companies – being cut back? About a hundred senior citizens are about to join me at an AARP presentation in Vancouver to try to get those answers. We’ll be listening in to hear what seniors are most concerned about.

I was tipped off about attending this event, after interviewing the state’s AARP advocacy director, Ingrid McDonald. She told me she’s working hard to debunk a lot myths about changes to Medicare. And while Medicare provides federal health insurance coverage to Americans ages 65 and older, McDonald says people in the 50-64 age range are among the most vulnerable in our current health care system. She’s also addressing what the law means for their insurance coverage.

We’ll be passing on the answers to you in The Impact’s special report on health care reform, which will air in September. Tune in. In the meantime, if you have questions relating to seniors or anyone else affected by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, you can check out the concise information on AARP’s website here.

Tags: health care reform, Medicare, The Impact

Karen Lee, director of the state’s Employment Security office, is leaving her post at the end of September to take a job as CEO of Pioneer Human Services in Seattle.

“Under Karen’s leadership, the Employment Security Department has been transformed to become one of the highest-performing agencies in state government,” Gov. Chris Gregoire said in a statement, touting Lee’s “laser focus on customer service” that has helped the state get through the recession.

Gregoire will begin looking for Lee’s replacement immediately. Pioneer Human Services is a Seattle-based non-profit with more than 50 locations and 1,000 employees. They deliver “an integrated mix of social, health, economic and employment services to people on the margins of society,” according to the news release.

Tags: Employment Security

Sorry for the delay, but this week’s Q&A is very special: I went to Seattle earlier this week to co-moderate debates between Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson and challenger Stan Rumbaugh and Justice Richard Sanders and challenger Charlie Wiggins (the other challenger, Bryan Chushcoff, didn’t show. Neither did Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, who is running unopposed).

The candidates discussed their views on judicial activism, victims’ rights,  the relationship between the Legislature and the court, medicinal marijuana, the high-earners income tax on the ballot, gun rights, opponents’ allegations and much, much more.

Here’s the video:

On a related note: Have you received your ballot yet? They were sent out this week, so check your mailbox. In the case of the candiddates in the video above, if one gets more than 50 percent of the vote they win. No general election required.

Tags: elections, Q&A, supreme court

On the last day of our eastern & central Washington tour, we visited a small business in Spokane. Janine Vaughn owns Revival Lighting – a specialty lighting store with ten employees. Janine has provided insurance to her workers since she started the company with two partners nearly 12 years ago. Every December she says she spends 40 hours researching insurance plans in an effort to provide the best coverage at the lowest cost, but she’s consistently watched her rates increase and benefits decrease. Right now, she spends about $23,000 per year to insure her 10 workers.

We talk with Janine about how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act addresses concerns of small businesses, specifically tax credits and the yet-to-be-launched small business insurance exchange. You’ll hear how she envisions it impacting her business and where she thinks the law falls short.

We’re heading back from Spokane today, and next week, we’ll be focusing on Medicare, talking with AARP experts and seniors concerned about how their coverage will and could change. I’ll continue posting blogs about what I learn in my travels. You can watch for The Impact special report on health care reform in September on TVW.

Tags: health care reform, The Impact

While The Impact is on hiatus, I’m working on a special report on national health care reform and what it means for Washingtonians. We’re based out of Olympia, which means we spend a lot of time covering the state’s main population zone – the Puget Sound area. However, some of the biggest health care issues are in rural areas – central and eastern Washington.

To address health care access problems, there are a lot of programs already underway in Yakima, in particular. These programs will be expanded under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in March. One such program is Yakima Neighborhood Health Services – what’s known as a community health center. A demonstration project, launched 45 years ago, created the country’s first two community health centers – one in Massachusetts and one in Mississippi. More than four decades later, community health centers serve 20 million people across the country.

At YNHS, the health services are vast and comprehensive: pediatric, maternity, dental, mental health, pharmaceutical, and vision. Its patients, too, are diverse – Spanish speakers, low-income, Medicaid users, the uninsured. One consistency is that anyone is welcome. The national health care reform law includes $11 billion to expand community health centers like YNHS, in order to address the skyrocketing demand that will come from insuring millions more people. We talk with one of its long-time patients – 29-year-old Leticia Garcia, a mother of 5, who was visiting the clinic with a fever, stomach virus and anxiety-related issues. We learn about her care under the community health center model.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: health care reform, The Impact