How about gruesome, dreadful, ugly, unconscionable, scary or hurtful?
An all-cuts approach to the budget deficit is all of these and more.
The state has already lopped $10 billion out of the state budget in the past three years. It’s time to bring a more balanced approach to the state budget crisis.
It won’t be easy: Voters last year approved Initiative 1053, which requires a two-thirds vote of the state Legislature to raise taxes. The vote wasn’t even close, with 64 percent saying “yes” to the no-new-taxes option.
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the initiative is still winding its way through the courts. It’s a case that will likely end up before the state Supreme Court next year.
In other words, any portion of a budget balancing act that includes new taxes would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature. Good luck on that one.
Short of that, the Legislature, through a majority vote, could pass a bill placing a tax measure before voters for approval through the referendum process.
Has the nature of the pending budget cuts grown so dark and dreadful that voters would be sympathetic to raising taxes as part of the solution?
Tough question. But it needs to be asked and it needs to be answered.
Look at the list of cuts on the table, if legislators stick to budget-cutting as the only option. They include:
• A statewide 50 percent cut in school district levy equalization payments that level the playing field for school district with higher than average property tax rates. It would save the state $150 million, but at what price? In North Thurston Public Schools, the revenue lost would be $1.7 million next year and $742,000 in the Tumwater School District. Some districts would try to pass their own levies to make up the difference, so homeowners would be asked to pay more to keep their schools operating.
• Reduce state funding of higher education by 15 percent, or $166 million. This would be on the heels of deep cuts that forced colleges and universities to impose double-digit tuition increases this school year.
In this deep economic recession, we need an educated citizenry to help the economy recover. Limiting access to higher education is not in anybody’s best interests.
• Eliminate the state’s Basic Health Plan, which provides subsidized health care to 35,000 low-income individuals. This would save some $48 million in the state budget, but again, at what cost? The medical care needs of these citizens won’t go away. They will turn up in hospital emergency rooms, taxing health care facilities and driving up health care costs for everyone.
• Cut to 12 months the length of time offenders released from prison receive supervision, except for sex offenders, who would be supervised 24 months. The savings would be $27 million, or would it? Isn’t there an increased risk of violent crime associated with cuts in supervision?
Reduced access to college, increased reliance on emergency rooms for health care, threats to public safety. These are the costs that surface once the cuts are made.
State budget writers concede there could be a whole host of consequences triggered by an all-cuts budget.
“There are costs associated with these cuts that we don’t know how to quantify,” state budget director Marty Brown said.
The governor has agreed to turn her attention now to flushing out other options to help balance the budget, including new taxes, reducing tax breaks that don’t create jobs or boost the economy, continued government reforms to improve delivery of services and other approaches.
The Legislature should have a full range of options to consider – not just the governor’s – when they convene in a special session Nov. 28.
Lawmakers and voters must keep an open mind to the choices. People’s lives and livelihoods – and the quality of life in our state – hang in the balance.
