“I would support the governor’s proposal to have (state) employees pay a little more for health insurance,” said Jason Hearn, a Lacey City Council member and Republican who owns a media and advertising company.
Hearn was referring to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s labor contract proposal to raise the employee share of health care premiums to 26 percent, while holding workers’ out-of-pocket costs at current levels.
“I think taking them from 12 percent to 26 percent in one year is not a good idea,” Democratic rival Chris Reykdal said. He serves on the Tumwater School Board and works as deputy executive director for the state board overseeing community and technical colleges.
Hearn and Reykdal were the top two vote-getters in the August primary for the seat of retiring state Rep. Brendan Williams in a district that has favored Democrats for nearly 30 years.
Compensation for state employees is a hot topic in many legislative races, but especially in the 22nd District, which encompasses Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater and north Thurston County. The county relies on state government for more than 21,000 government-related jobs here.
The state allocates $850 a month per worker – on average – for health, life and disability insurance and other benefits for state employees, and it could cost $280 million in the next budget cycle to maintain employees’ share of costs, according to the governor’s Office of Financial Management. In fact, it would require policy changes to tap health reserves or deeper cuts in a budget already facing a $4.5 billion shortfall in 2011-13.
While Hearn said everyone must do his fair share, Reykdal said study after study shows public-sector workers earn less than counterparts in the private sector. He said health care coverage is a trade-off for the temporary furloughs and other hits workers have taken – including no cost-of-living pay increases for the past two years and none likely for two more years.
The health-benefits question also splits the two candidates in the other 22nd District race, in which five-term Democratic Rep. Sam Hunt of Olympia faces Chris Ward of Olympia, who states “No Party” preference.
Hunt, a retired former state employee who has fought higher worker health costs, said it would be better to keep employee health costs at current levels while cutting more state jobs – if he had to choose between the two.
Ward, who works for a small computer repair shop in Olympia, said it is common for private employers to pay just 60 percent of health premiums, with workers making up the rest. He said state workers should pay more – but not all – of the cost for insurance.
All four 22nd District candidates spoke Wednesday to The Olympian’s editorial board.
On other issues, Hearn said his job as a 22nd District lawmaker would be “to fight for state employees” by protecting pensions and providing more stability in the work force. He would do that by working for sustainable state budgets that avoided the shortfalls of the past two years “by better projecting” the level of revenue and costs.
He said his experience on the Lacey City Council, which balanced budgets without staff cuts or tax increases, prepared him to do that.
Hearn, who is running under the “GOP” party label, was unable to say how he would come up with the money needed or how he would make major cuts to cover the emerging $4.5 billion shortfall.
Part of that shortfall is the result of the more than $700 million increase the state must make in pension investments next year to make the funds more solvent; more than $1 billion is for public school teachers’ pay, cutting class sizes and expansion of all-day kindergarten programs.
Hearn, who home-schools his children, said he supports a freeze on technology investments and favors putting that money into merit pay for effective teachers. And he thinks the state should “explore all reasonable options for privatization” – such as shifting part of the state’s liquor and printing operations into private hands.
He also said he “probably would have supported” Gregoire’s no-new-revenue budget issued in December 2009.
Reykdal said stabilizing the budget would be his first priority for the district, and he opposed the governor’s first budget.
That budget went beyond suspending cost-of-living raises for public employees and would have cut college financial aid, levy aid to schools and health care programs for the poor.
Majority Democrats avoided some of the proposed cuts by raising taxes.
Reykdal said he supported the combination of cuts and higher taxes and noted lawmakers already cut more than $4 billion from the budget during the past two years. But he did not like that Democratic lawmakers in April approved “six more regressive taxes,” including taxes on bottled water, soda and candy.
Reykdal also favors an income tax, supports Initiative 1098’s tax on high-earners and wants long-term reform of the state’s tax structure.
He said federal Bureau of Economic Analysis data show that over the past 40 years, state and local government spending has shrunk from 12 percent of the gross domestic product to 10 percent.
Hunt and Ward also differed on the budget, taxes and citizen initiatives that affect funding. Ward said the “working class” isn’t represented by Hunt and that lawmakers overturn voter-approved initiatives as soon as they can.
Ward acknowledged that his website has a link to Republican sites and said he has “some conservative leanings, right of center, but not the Republican tea party.” He said he has more kinship with the Reform Party started by Ross Perot and thinks government should live within its means.
Ward called Gregoire’s recent order for 6.3 percent across-the-board cuts “a little small and a little late. We probably need a 12 to 15 percent cut.” Asked how he would cut to make up the state’s shortfall, he said, “I think the best way to do it is to ask for a reduction in pay, either on an hourly wage basis or a reduction in hours.”
Ward said he also wants to eliminate business and occupation taxes for all businesses with gross revenue of up to $1 billion a year, while boosting taxes for large retailers to make up for the loss. Ward opposes the high-earners tax on income in I-1098.
Hunt did not have specific cuts to suggest to close the budget gap. But he said there will be questions about paying for all-day kindergarten, the Basic Health Plan for lower-income workers and the Disability Lifeline, which provides health care and money to people temporarily disabled.
He said his majority party did not do enough to reform state government in the most recent session. But he defended his vote to suspend Initiative 960’s two-thirds vote requirement for tax increases, explaining, “We govern by majority, not minority.”
Hunt said he did work on some government restructuring – putting the printing department inside the Information Services agency to save money, working on a bill to break the Department of Social and Health Services into four smaller agencies, and promoting the combining of school districts to eliminate the overhead and costly superintendents.
He also said Democratic state lawmakers could not control the national political and economic meltdown that pushed the state into deficits. In 2008, he said, lawmakers left more than $800 million in expected savings, believing it would be enough.
Hunt said that if he’d seen the recession’s depth coming, he might not have voted to increase spending on health care for children.
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688 bshannon@theolympian.com www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
