Category: Budget

Best new news service: Undead Olympia

At last someone is analyzing Olympia news with a sense of humor. I only get gashed a little in their article on the budget we put out last week.

http://www.undeadolympia.com/2011/01/18/ross-hunters-budget-proposal-you-win-some-you-ooze-some/

A good quote: Though vampires, zombies, and werewolves are glad to see his budget proposal eliminate the Basic Health program, reduce care for the elderly, and make other undead-friendly moves, there is much frustration in the undead community over the fact that many services for children were preserved.

Answering Email

00262911I’m sitting at my desk in Olympia answering email, mostly about the budget. Lots of people are writing in about different subjects, but all have the same theme – protect MY program. This is pretty interesting and useful data, but it’s hard to make decisions based on it.

For example, I get a lot of mail about preserving “gifted education”. The state sends out tens of millions in this category every year, with an equal amount going to every district based on student population. State funding makes up about 15% of what is spent in this area every year, so 85% of the money is coming from local sources, mostly your local levies.  The state budget line item is about $30 million per year, or about 0.3% of annual state school budgets. There are many other programs that distribute money the same way – evenly based on student count.

Ever think about why we don’t just combine all of these small items into one single pot?

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Ross Elected chairman of Ways and Means

Earlier this week the House Democrats voted to make me chairman of the Ways and Means committee in the House, responsible for tax policy and crafting the biennial budget. I’m pleased that my co-workers believe I am capable of leading the process of creating a budget in these difficult times.

The Finance committee that I chair today was combined with the existing Ways and Means committee.

After the holidays I’ll write more about how we’re going to go about this.

Special Session Budget Report

This weekend the Legislature met in a special session to address the budget shortfall. Unlike what you’ve heard in the press, we can’t all arrive in Olympia, figure out what we’re going to do, get agreement from 147 legislators, write it down on scraps of paper and call it a day. Turning all the decisions into a bill takes 2-3 days, including much error checking and review. Getting consensus took several weeks. All four caucuses (Senate, House, Democrats and Republicans) worked cooperatively with the Governor to make this happen. It was the smoothest budget change I’ve ever seen.

The total problem that needs to be solved is about $1.1 billion. There was about $8 billion in planned spending left in the fiscal year, so this is 13.75% of the remaining spending. We made changes that reduce the budget problem by between $550 and $700 million. There is a relatively complex interaction between the bill we passed and the Governor’s existing across the board cuts that we’re working out all the details of. This will take another few days. Solving $700 million of the problem leaves over $400 million left to resolve in the first few weeks of the session in January, but it’s good to get these decisions done and over with.

I don’t want to make this sound like a technical exercise – it wasn’t.

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Revenue collections, same store sales – good news!

Washington’s revenue collections report out this week was good news. The actual revenue was $2.5 million above the forecast. Being off by $2.5 million (0.3%) means Dr. Raha hit the bullseye – this is within the margin of error. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so excited about a flat collections report, but flat is the new up these days.

Read the collections report here: http://www.erfc.wa.gov/publications/documents/oct10.pdf

The New York Times also reports good news. Theirs is somewhat better – reporting that September sales nationally were better than expected.

Back-to-school sales that were stronger than expected have retailers cautiously hoping consumers are back and gearing up for a robust holiday shopping season. As they emerged from a slow summer, many of the nation’s retailers on Thursday reported unexpectedly good sales in September at stores open at least a year — a crucial indicator known as same-store sales. New York Times Oct. 7 2010 

This is good, and will appear in the November collections report, though we’ll see it somewhat in the daily collection numbers. These aren’t typically published because they make you crazy. If some kid at Costco forgets to push a button some afternoon and does it in the morning instead the numbers are off by an order of magnitude. They only really make sense at the end of the month.

State Budget Options

I’ve posted a document to the site that has a number of proposals on how we should address the budget situation we face this year. Like most other states our revenue has tumbled as a result of the change in spending habits coming from the economic downturn. I believe we face a structural change in how we as a state will operate, and that decisions we make today will have foundational impacts on the structure of the state in the future.

I’d love to receive comments on the ideas in the document. It’s the beginning of a plan, but a detailed plan will have to be built collaboratively with other legislators, including legislators from both sides of the aisle. It is impossible to make lasting structural changes without building broad consensus for them – a project I’ll be working on for the next 2 years.

Budget Strategy – Structural Reset

Tech Jobs in Washington

Last week I met with the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) to talk about their agenda for 2011. No surprise, it’s about jobs here in Washington. What surprised me was how they chose to spend their time in the meeting. We had an hour set aside (but took 2). They started with over 45 minutes on improving the K-12 education system in Washington.

Their bigest complaint is that it’s hard to hire competent people from inside the state. They showed me a job description for a technical support manager from a local high tech company that has been open for 6 months. This is 6 months in the middle of the worst economic downturn in the last 70 years, mind you. The job pays $125,000 a year. It’s risky and expensive to hire from out of state – some fraction of the people they hire don’t like the area and move away, and the moving and recruiting costs are excessive.

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Budget Thoughts

This email came to me early in the session in 2010 and was incredibly touching. It’s easy to get involved in the details of the budget in a very technical way and forget the human needs we try to address. As a policy geek I’m perhaps more subject to this than other people.

Dear Rep. Hunter,

I just got done listening to the Governor’s speech and I feel for the first time in my life I must write to someone. I hope you are that someone. I am 53 and my daughter is 19. She has just finished her 1st quarter of college at Western Wash. Unversity. I have worked hard all my life. I have rasied my daughter alone. We are fortunate enough to have health insurance thru Basic Health. Now I hear that it is in jeopardy of being shut down. Please do not let this happen. I am to old to be without insurance and I cannot afford any other. They raised our premiums last year so they didn’t have to let people off the plan. I was hoping that we were safe. Please you must try and find a way to save Basic Health without letting people go. They are alot of people that depend on this insurance. Otherwise most of us would have to go to the ER and end up costing the state more money in the long run.

I am also asking that you find the money to contiune with the state need grants for higher education. Without that money my daughter will have to quit school and end up working some dead end job. She worked very hard in High School so she could go to college. She is the first in our family to ever go to college. She goes full time to school and works part time to have extra money for books and anything else she needs. I know that once she finish college she will do something good for this world, but she depends on the state grants for help. Please find some way to keep those also.

Thank you for reading this and I know that this will be a very diffcult session with some hard choices but education and health care to me are the two most important issues.

Thank you,

<Name withheld by Ross>

Labor Day – Where do we go from here?

The Seattle Times today is filled with stories about the future of the American worker, and how workers of tomorrow will have to have more education and skills than many of today’s workers.

Labor Day 2010: Few jobs for low-skilled workers

There is a certain irony this Labor Day at a time of record unemployment, writes Evelyn Ganzglass. Fixing the problem requires more than creating an environment in which the private sector can create new jobs. Too many of today’s workers lack the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century

Future jobs: More skills or less pay

Whenever companies start hiring freely again, job-seekers with specialized skills and education will have plenty of good opportunities. Others will face a choice: Take a job with low pay — or none at all. That’s the sobering message American workers face as they mark Labor Day at a time of high unemployment, scant hiring and a widespread loss of job security

I recently finished Richard Florida’s book “The Great Reset” which makes a similar case. You can read a short(er) article on by Florida in March issue of The Atlantic magazine on the same topic. Click here for the article. I recommend the book.

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Tracking the Economy…

On Thursday of last week, Governor Gregoire asked all her agencies to prepare for budget cuts of between $300 and $500 million. She is planning to take action on October 1st, immediately following the revenue forecast that will be released in late September. In her address she suggests that she and the legislature work together on a plan to make cuts of around $500 million in a supplemental budget. In this budget we might make more targeted cuts, or leave some areas untouched.

The Seattle Times writes about it here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012605452_budgetcuts13m.html

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