This week’s Q&A is with House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown. I’ve posted the interview in the order in which they were conducted, as usual, asked each the same broad questions, and included everything each lawmaker said. The conversations cover marijuana, public safety bills, taxes and job creation. And no interview would be complete without talking about the budget. Enjoy.

Rep. Richard DeBolt:

Q: There are currently bills to close state government for one day per month, limit state worker salaries and another in the House to make official about $50 million in cuts from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget. Which of those do you support, what other ideas do you have and what’s the timeline?

DeBolt: I guess the first thing that I would like to say about it is we saw some of these problems because we have a systematically flawed budget process. We have to change how we budget and what our priorities are.
I would break the budgeting process up: I would do an education only budget first. It’s our paramount duty, so we should fund it first. Then we can fund public safety and the vulnerable. Then, with whatever is left, you make the rest of your budget. So you protect the children and the most vulnerable.

Q: What about the furloughs?

DeBolt: As far as furloughs, we haven’t had a chance to explore the bills fully yet. The bills were introduced and the process probably broke down a little bit so we don’t have all the details yet.
From my perspective, we think everything should be on the table. We need to make sure that what we’re doing to balance the budget is real – not just delaying costs until later.

Q: You mentioned an education-first budget. When I was covering the Oregon Legislature in 2005, the Republican House Speaker suggested a similar proposal to fund education first.

DeBolt: Oh yeah — and what happened?

Q: It didn’t pass, and they were in session for about eight months that year because the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate couldn’t agree on much. Why is that a controversial idea?

DeBolt: I remember that. We’ve been suggesting the education-budget first idea since 2002. We haven’t even gotten a hearing on it.

Q: Why do you think that is?

DeBolt: I think that Olympia is stuck in the past and has a tendency to be myopic in their viewpoints. So if its outside the box, it’s probably not going to be considered. We’re not a super change-oriented place.

Q: So would closing state government for one day a month be something you could support?

DeBolt: I don’t know because for some services, it could be problematic. For example, I want to get our permitting wait times down. Can they do the same amount of work if we’re furloughing people? That’s of interest to me. I don’t know how the functions of government would be changed. I don’t know if you can just arbitrarily close all the agencies and make it work. If it’s agencies that support our economy and help move us forward, we shouldn’t slow that down.

Q: One big policy issue has been public safety, in the wake of the police shootings last year. A Constitutional amendment is on the table — is that the right move? Is there danger in amending the Constitution so soon after these crimes? (more…)

Tags: Budget, cuts, marijuana, public safety, taxes

Right now, the Senate Ways & Means Committee is meeting to discuss whether state government should be closed one day per month to save money. Here is the bill.

“Please let us continue to figure out how to meet these trying times locally,” said Susan Barton, who works for Western Washington and is on a committee to address budget cuts there. She said state workers have paid enough.

“Since when is not getting a pay increase getting a pay cut,” Sen. Joe Zarelli said. “To equate that to … participating in solving our budget crisis,” doesn’t make sense, he said. Zarelli said he wanted to hear positive input about how to solve the budget dilemma.

Greg Devereux with the Washington Federation of State Employees told Zarelli that state employees started out behind the private sector in wages. So taking away a 2 percent increase in salary is effectively a cut.

The House Ways & Means Committee is also meeting on the bill we told you about this morning that makes official nearly $50 million of cuts put forth in Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget.

Tags: Budget, cuts

GAU is supposed to be temporary, Gregoire said. “Much of the reason for it is to see those people who are truly disabled to a program called GAX” she said. “I have reviewed the numbers and … about 32 percent of those who come on are found to be ultimately eligible for the federal program,” she said, after six months. But after that, returns diminish to about 2 percent. So: She’s capping GAU to six months.

Tags: Budget, cuts, Gregoire

Austin Jenkins asked why not look at state workers: They’re the most expensive part of state government.

“When you do something that people believe to be illegal, you get sued,” she said, “so, if I unilaterally, in violation of contracts, take some of the actions that you just articulated, I am going to get sued,” she said.

He asked if that was a sign that state unions were too powerful. “This is not about power … we have people now that are doing critical work. You want me to let go of state patrol officers? I am not willing,” she said.

“I have had some very interesting discussions with people in the business community who I think have learned, you can’t run state government like a business,” she said.

Tags: cuts, Gregoire

That’s how Gov. Gregoire’s Budget Director, Victor Moore, characterized the challenge state lawmakers will face in January when they return to Olympia and have to patch what he predicts will be a budget hole of between $750 million and $1 billion.

“Inside Olympia” host Austin Jenkins interviewed Moore and top budget writers in the House, Reps. Kelli Linville (D-Bellingham) and Gary Alexander (R-Olympia), following this morning’s latest state revenue forecast.   Watch the interviews at 7 & 10 p.m. this evening. Here’s a link to the show’s home page.

How will lawmakers make those cuts?  According to Moore, the Governor’s budget will have to look at wholesale elimination of discretionary programs.  Are new taxes a possibility?  “We are not looking at new taxes right now,” rather he’s working on a cut-based budget.

Linville said lawmakers need to squeeze everything they can out of government reform and efficiencies before shutting down whole programs — she cited the state’s General Assistance Unemployable (GAU) program as an example of a program that should be improved rather than eliminated.  Are new taxes a possibility?  She said the public is the key: Voters will likely have the final say on any tax hike, and unless the public is convinced lawmakers have adequately reformed government, “I don’t think taxes will pass the public interest test.”

Alexander advocated for “smaller government”  and emphasized the need for lawmakers to act early on the budget in order to maximize savings from budget cuts.  He was frustrated by last year’s budget, which he said incorporated no major reforms.  He said lawmakers need to pursue such reforms, including funding the state’s core  responsibilities first — in particular, public schools — eliminating non-core programs like GAU, and privatizing or contracting out state services.

All agreed there’s no need for a special session before January.  Lawmakers convene in Olympia on Monday, January 11th, for a 60-day session.

Tags: cuts, Inside Olympia, state budget, taxes

Washington schools will get $672 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — aka the federal stimulus package — $331 million will be available this fall, according to a release sent out by the U.S. Secretary of Education, Anne Duncan. That dwarfs the $194 million the state has received for education from the stimulus package so far.

The state plans to use all of the money in 2009 for elementary and secondary schools. In 2010, they’ll use most for elementary and secondary schools and about $100 million for public institutions of higher education.

According to the announcement, the additional funding comes after successfully completing the first portion of the state application.

“The $672 million Washington will receive today is part of the single largest boost in education funding in recent history,” Duncan said in the release. She said the state can use the money to “save jobs and lay the groundwork for a generation of education reform.”

To get the money, the state had to make a few promises. Gov. Chris Gregoire and state schools superintendent Randy Dorn signed the application, which you can read here, promising that they’d hold funding for elementary education at 2006 levels or above through fiscal year 2011. In 2006, the state spent $5.4 billion on education. In 2009, the budget is $6.5 billion — so education would have to get cut quite a bit to fall to 2006 levels.

They also pledged to “collect, publish, analyze and act on basic information regarding the quality of classroom teachers, annual student improvements, college readiness, the effectiveness of state standards and assessments, progress on removing charter caps and interventions in turning around underperforming schools.” And they must report back on how many jobs are saved by the boost and/or the amount of tax increases avoided.

One interesting thing about the application: Included in it (Attachment A, Section 4) is a program Gregoire ended up vetoing. The program would have directed funding to low-income areas for all-day kindergarten. She said at the time of the veto that all children deserved all-day kindergarten.

There’s also a part at the end that I don’t quite understand — it looks like some of the money for higher education may go toward reducing the tuition increase… Stay tuned.

Tags: cuts, federal stimulus, Gregoire, Schools

Rich Roesler reports that more than 2,000 teachers have received notice that they’ll lose their jobs.

And, according to the Washington Education Association, that number will only grow.

The WEA issued the following statement: “The final number of lost teaching jobs is expected to be much higher. The impact on schools is the same either way: Fewer teachers and more students in each classroom.“

Tags: cuts, education, teachers

A couple of weeks ago, University of Washington President Mark Emmert said his university would have to lay off people in the next three weeks. Those layoffs hit today: 36 unfilled positions, 34 staff positions and 16 full-time to part-time conversions were made, all in the development, marketing and alumni relations departments.

The layoffs were not, however, due to state budget cuts, according to the university. Instead, they were from a department funded by an endowment. The endowment’s investments tanked, so they had to save $6 million.

The rest is from the press release:
“Sadly, this is the first wave of layoffs in the current economic climate that the university faces, but it is not likely to be the last,” says UW President Mark Emmert. “These cuts occurred because of losses in the stock market. A lot of good, talented people are being forced from their jobs as a result. When the state legislature adopts its budget for the coming two years, we are anticipating budget cuts that would result in much larger numbers of people losing their jobs here.”
The University has estimated that 600-800 state-funded positions would be lost under proposed budgets before the Legislature.
Employees were notified of the changes today, which affect roughly 20 percent of the unit’s staff. The cuts will save about $6 million out of the unit’s $30 million annual budget.

Tags: Budget, cuts, university

Governor Chris Gregoire just signed the “belt tightening” and “early action savings” bills from the Senate and House, respectfully.

The bills:

- Puts into law the hiring and spending freezes that Gregoire ordered last August — then recently lifted

- Prevents legislative, judicial and executive branches from: hiring, entering personal service contracts,
purchasing equipment more than $5,000 and traveling out of state.

- The House bill makes some $600 million in other cuts to this biennium.

Tags: Budget, cuts

Tonight on The Impact, host Jennifer Huntley will talk to Representative Ed Orcutt and Senator Craig Pridemore. They’ll talk about tomorrow’s preliminary revenue forecast and what programs stand to get cut.

Pridemore and Orcutt are in the studio now. Here’s a small preview of what they have to say:

- Both expect the revenue forecast to be worse. Pridemore said he expects it to be “significantly worse” — around $8 billion.

- Pridemore said cuts will start coming through next week. He said that, because about half of the budget goes to things that can’t be cut (like debt service and education), that leaves about $8 billion in cuts from $17 billion or so of the biennial budget. He said some programs could get cut “20, 40, 100 percent.”

- Tune in tonight at 7 and 10 p.m., or watch online at tvw.org.

- Speaking of revenue forecast, it will be liveblogged here, and broadcast on TVW and webcast at tvw.org tomorrow live at 4:30 p.m.

Tags: Budget, cuts, revenue, taxes