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Budget wizardry by our governor? Maybe next time
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Mar 23, 2005 10:41am |
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| Category | Perspective |
| News Date | Wednesday, March 23, 2005 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | There’s some low-hanging fruit left unpicked after all.
It was the cliché of the year to describe the tough budget new Gov. Christine Gregoire and state lawmakers were facing.
Balancing this budget would take a taller ladder and more risk.
But a first read through Gregoire’s $25.8 billion, two-year budget plan released Monday shows there was plenty of reachable fruit left on the tree.
Out of the $1.4 billion in savings and reductions proposed, almost $1 billion is budget magic – transfers from dedicated accounts with extra money, delayed contributions to pensions, shifts in costs from the main budget to the construction budget...
Gregoire then goes to two groups for increased taxes that will cause the least political pain – smokers and wealthy people. By increasing the cigarette tax by 20 cents a pack and partially restoring an inheritance tax disallowed by the state Supreme Court, Gregoire says she can dedicate money to education.
Certainly there are cuts in Gregoire’s plan. Fewer seniors would receive help to stay in their own homes. A last-chance welfare program called general assistance-unemployable would cover fewer people. About 1,000 management jobs in government would go away.
But cuts that could be used to build opposition for this budget and support for broader tax increases are not evident. Schools, union chiefs and even advocates for the poor prefaced their concerns with statements that her budget could have been a lot worse.
There were even compliments for her ability to spend more on schools, colleges, children’s health care and other social services. Those additions – especially permanent money for class-size reductions – prompted Gregoire to dub her’s “a legacy budget.”
But one legacy is that the next budget – and the one after that and the one after that – will have shortfalls that will require more cuts, higher taxes... |
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