Everybody in Olympia is a reformer these days.
Gov. Chris Gregoire last week became the latest to jump onto a conga line of politicians with reform ideas to explore in the 60-day legislative session that begins in January.
Each lawmaker has a different motivation. Gregoire says her ideas – privatizing the state lottery among them – would merely continue her work to make government cheaper and more effective.
The state’s fiscal crisis is lending the proposals a new sense of urgency – and not just because some of them would save money.
Moderate Democrats are in a position to demand reforms in exchange for votes on taxes. That means a half-cent sales tax – or some other tax increase to close a big piece of the state’s $1.5 billion budget gap – is likely riding on the outcome of the reform debate.
“We’re not there for me yet,” said Rep. Deb Eddy of Kirkland, who says she has no litmus test but is looking for more evidence of reform.
ROAD KILL DEMOCRATS
Eddy is one of the self-styled “Road Kill Caucus” lawmakers, moderate-to-conservative Democrats who picked up their nickname from their habit of living in the middle of the political road, where they say they are often run over by more partisan members of both parties.
Eddy, a proponent of long-range budgeting, was pleased to see Gregoire move in that direction last week with a return to issuing six-year financial outlooks.
Other ideas mentioned in interviews with Eddy and fellow Road Kill members Sens. Steve Hobbs of Lake Stevens, Brian Hatfield of Raymond and Jim Kastama of Puyallup:
- Streamlining natural resource permits.
- Encouraging preventative care to reduce state employee health care costs.
- Additional school reforms aimed at raising student performance.
- Lumping all 295 public-school districts’ health plans together to get lower rates through a larger buying pool.
“The way we frame this is, it’s a menu of options they can choose,” Hobbs said last week, refusing to divulge the entire list of ideas Road Kill Democrats gave top Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate. “We have not said it is a list of items we have to have” before agreeing to taxes.
CONVINCING VOTERS
Hatfield said he would like to support new revenue but wants a ballot measure the voters can accept and that won’t be opposed by major businesses. He said it is a “big if” whether business groups – or voters – will be convinced to support new taxes if lawmakers don’t shrink government, too.
Even liberal Democrats realize they will have to woo voters with reforms.
Leaders of the Senate Democratic Caucus have appointed two members, Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam and Nick Harper of Everett, to review reform proposals. Ideas under review include privatization, overhauling the tax code and eliminating and reorganizing programs.
“There are few in the caucus,” Harper said, “who feel like we can legitimately go out to the voters for any kind of new revenue before we’ve made the case: What is it we’d actually be asking you to pay for?”
VOTER MANDATES
Lawmakers of all stripes are talking about repealing initiatives that the state struggles to pay for or asking voters to find ways to pay for them. A seemingly unlikely duo – Republican Sen. Dan Swecker of Rochester and Democratic Sen. Debbie Regala of Tacoma – last week introduced a constitutional amendment that would require citizen initiatives to identify a new source of money to cover any new costs they create.
Such proposals are prompted in part by last month’s passage of Initiative 1163, which raises the training requirement for home care workers and requires about $18 million in new state spending. But older education ballot measures also feed the debate.
Gregoire’s outlook projects that the state won’t be able to meet its goal of improving funding for basic education plus pay for voter initiatives demanding smaller class sizes and teacher raises. Lawmakers have repeatedly suspended Initiatives 728 and 732, and some Republicans and Road Kill Democrats alike say they should be wiped off the books to create a sustainable budget.
“If we go to the voters (with taxes), our intent is to say to the voters, ‘When you vote for this, it will solve the problem,’” said Kastama, who is running for secretary of state.
Gregoire and other Democrats oppose ending the programs permanently.
Harper said he has mixed feelings. He supports blocking initiatives without a funding source, but he said the education initiatives have worthy goals.
“When I tour a school district, you see 36-37 kids huddled around science labs that were designed for 25-26,” Harper said.
RETHINKING SERVICES
The push for reform is moving some long-discussed privatization ideas closer than ever to fruition and encouraging new ones to emerge.
Using authority granted by the Legislature last winter, Gregoire announced last week her administration would solicit bids next year from private print shops, website hosts and courier services to do jobs that about 40 government employees now handle.
She also wants authority from the Legislature to accept bids to run Washington’s lottery. The state would keep oversight of the program and would not seek an expansion of games, she says.
At the same time, Gregoire called for eliminating the three-person state Liquor Control Board – or at least making the appointed board members volunteers and eliminating the trio’s annual pay of more than $50,000 each plus benefits and staff costs. Now that Initiative 1183 is shuttering state liquor stores, Gregoire said, a single director can handle the agency’s remaining work of handing out liquor licenses and enforcing the law.
The governor has proposed government-reorganization measures in the past with mixed results. Lawmakers turned down her proposal for a single education agency earlier this year, but backed her merger of back-office functions into the new Enterprise Services agency.
Kastama, frustrated by the halting pace, wants to create a commission that would have the power to force more government consolidations. The panel would be made up of such elder statesmen as former Gov. Dan Evans and former Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder and would have special power to force an up-or-down vote in the Legislature.
CROSSING THE AISLE
The moderates have extra leverage in the Senate, given that Democrats have a slim 27-to-22 edge over Republicans. Senate Republicans were able to work with the Road Kill Caucus to extract labor reforms from majority Democrats in the agency merger bill.
Republicans are hoping the Road Kill members can provide an assist again next year. The Senate’s GOP members favor the pooling of teacher health insurance plans, more contracting out of state services and changes to collective bargaining that could let the governor suspend labor contracts during fiscal emergencies.
“I think the Road Kill people will not do anything before they get the reforms and they are the ones that are likely to support the revenue package,” said Senate Republican Leader Mike Hewitt of Walla Walla, whose caucus opposes new taxes and wants to find ways to reduce spending through efficiencies. “They are even using our motto: reforms before revenue.”
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688
bshannon@theolympian.com
www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826
jordan.schrader@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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