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If the last two rounds of budgeting have required a scalpel, with lawmakers choosing programs based on their importance and political heft, Gregoire would use a set of shears to cut a little off the top.
Unlike the Legislature, Gregoire doesn’t have the authority to make surgical cuts, so she would simply reduce spending items in the budget by 3 percent to 5 percent, said her budget director, Marty Brown.
She could call lawmakers back for a special session instead, but Brown said that’s looking unlikely.
He said Gregoire expects to act by Sept. 1 if $480 million in federal aid doesn’t materialize by the time Congress takes its August break.
Budget writers, as with those in most states, took the aid for granted during the Legislature’s 2010 budget process. It’s part of a six-month, $23 billion extension of a 2009 stimulus act program known as FMAP, which matched state funds for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.
Some members of Congress concerned about the national debt have balked at giving states more money without a way to pay for it. It’s being held up along with aid to the unemployed and other stimulus spending that is running out.
Legislators and the governor left a big enough cushion to cover the loss, but tax revenues have continued to fall short of what analysts expected, leaving a more than $300 million shortfall for the rest of the year.
Spending on items, such as basic K-12 education, is protected, leaving only about 40 percent of the nearly $31 billion operating budget available for trimming. A majority of the cuts, 57 percent to 58 percent, Brown said, will hit health care and social services.
“With basic education out, DSHS just gets rocked,” said Brown, referring to the Department of Social and Health Services.
The department in some cases would have little discretion over where to cut. It would have to reduce spending on mental health institutions and community care for the mentally ill by the same 3 percent to 5 percent, for example.
“I can tell you they’re going to be painful,” department spokesman Thomas Shapley said of the cuts, “and of course a lot of our costs are personnel.”
The department already has more than 1,000 fewer employees than a year ago, Shapley said.
Another 11 percent of the cuts will affect prisons and other parts of the corrections system, where officials have already closed down two prisons and started a major downsizing of McNeil Island Corrections Center.
Eight percent would affect community colleges, even as the economic downturn brings record enrollment to the schools. They have made up part of their cuts over the past two years through tuition increases.
Each of 34 schools could choose where to make its cut, said Chris Reykdal, deputy executive director of the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
If across-the-board cuts are painful enough to cause public outcry, it could increase the Legislature’s interest in returning to Olympia.
Some in the Democratic majority don’t see a need for a special session. Brown said getting legislators to come to an agreement on what to do could be hard, considering a special session earlier this year was supposed to last a week and ended up keeping legislators in the capital for a month.
Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, said a session could be over in a few days if leaders of both parties reach an agreement privately first.
Zarelli prefers a special session to across-the-board cuts that last only until June or that don’t provide a cushion against more shortfalls. Brown said the governor doesn’t have the authority to create a reserve by making deeper cuts.
“If she just whacks her agencies for the remainder of this biennium, that doesn’t really solve any problems,” Zarelli said.
And the problems will persist next year, whatever Congress does, when the state faces a potential $3 billion budget shortfall.
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826 jordan.schrader@thenews tribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
