This is special update of the Federation Hotline at about 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18.
The governor’s proposed operating budget unveiled this morning (Dec. 18) is brutal on state employees and the services they provide.
In these tough fiscal times, everything was supposed to be on the table—including possible revenue increases and cutting some of the state’s $54 billion in tax loopholes and tax breaks.
So we’ll start with the call to action before the grim details:
Call your legislators at 1-800-562-6000 and urge them to find sensible solutions to the budget deficit that put everything on the table, not just on the backs of state employees and the services we provide. That means revenue increases and closing some of the state’s $54 billion in tax loopholes.
We’ll have an online call to action along those lines later today.
While the governor’s budget is grim, you must keep it in perspective. The Legislature usually ignores what the governor submits. So our focus has to be on the Legislature to step up and lead the way for sensible solutions to the deficit. The Legislature convenes Jan. 12.
On the governor’s proposal here’s what we know:
- The governor would invoke a little-known clause in the collective bargaining law allowing her to suspend negotiated pay raises if her budget office is unable to certify that there are funds to pay for them. That is what she has done. That means it will be back to the bargaining table to re-negotiate. She does propose honoring the negotiated funding of your health benefits—with the 12 percent premium share intact.
- She proposes cutting contributions into the retirement system—a cut of 46.8 percent. Her budget documents aren’t clear on how that would come about, but it’s a significant cut.
- She proposes cutting 4,000 state jobs. How many are vacancies and how many would mean actual people losing a job is not clear in her budget plan.
- She proposes a number of closures:
- Closure of Naselle Youth Camp, a juvenile rehabilitation facility with about 110 youthful offenders.
- Closure of Yakima Valley School, a facility in Selah for about 100 developmentally disabled residents.
- Closure of 13 state parks to be determined by the State Parks Commission in addition to winter closures at many parks.
- The governor said she would close seven fish hatcheries, but her budget documents only specify two proposed closures: Bellingham and Palmer Ponds.
- In Community Corrections, elimination of supervision of misdemeanants, discontinuation of community supervision for low-risk offenders (except for sex offenders and violent offenders) and setting of community custody sentence lengths at 12 months.
- The governor also would eliminate grants to individuals in the General Assistance-Unemployable program.
“Our biggest concern is that everything should be on the table and that includes tax loopholes and revenue enhancements,” Federation Executive Director Greg Devereux said. “If the economic parts of our negotiated contracts that were ratified two months ago can be suspended, why can’t a campaign pledge on no revenue increases be retracted?”
Devereux said the impact of 4,000 state employee layoffs will be worse for the economy and set off a “downward spiral.” Contrast that with revenue enhancements spread across 5 million Washington citizens.
“We can’t cut our way out of this deficit,” he said.
The 567 tax loopholes and tax breaks totaling $54 billion should be scrutinized and some repealed to save jobs and services, Devereux said.
Some 147 of those were enacted just since 2001, he said.
“It always falls on state employees (to balance the budget),” Devereux said. “Why can’t some exemptions be rolled back?”
That’s it for now. If other details come in, we will update this hotline.
Now the focus turns to the Legislature, where the real budget decisions will be made.
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