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Current Budget Situation
Last week Kelli Linville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and I sent a letter to Gov Gregoire outlining our recommendation that she use the authority she has to make across the board cuts in the budget. We did this because changes in the economy and lack of action at the federal…
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Retire-Rehire Program Abuse
The Seattle Times has a great story on the use of the “retire-rehire” provision in state law that allows someone to retire, and then be hired back by the state or another governmnet but still collect his or her retirement. When I searched on the issue on the internet I hit a bunch of similar…
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Paper: The Top Enemy of Efficiency
I sat through a briefing this morning on “Provider One,” the state’s new $200 million Medicaid claims processing software implementation exercise. We expect to go live with the software on May 6th, after 12-18 months of delay rolling the product out. I believe the implementation will mostly work at that point (this is a big…
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Rob McKenna and Healthcare
Earlier this week Attorney General Rob McKenna joined a lawsuit filed by a number of other AGs nationally to attack the new healthcare bill adopted in the other Washington. Here’s his press release on the suit: http://www.atg.wa.gov/pressrelease.aspx?&id=25402 He’s using 10th amendment grounds to do so, and my personal read is that the suit is unlikely…
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Interesting Pension Fund Data
The following was included in the most recent issue of Capitol Ideas, the magazine published by the Council of State Governments: “A new report from the Pew Center on the States finds a $1 trillion gap between the $2.35 trillion states have set aside to pay for employees’ retirement benefits and the $3.35 trillion price…
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Mr. Yuk
Mr. Yuk came by to lobby for the poison control center in the budget. It’s easy to get attention when you wear crazy costumes, though it looks like it’s difficult to get through doorways. I spend a lot of time at my desk, but he got me out of my office. I’m glad I don’t…
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Using the Gavel
I’ve had a couple of questions about the hearing we held this weekend on the Senate bill to temporarily suspend Initiative 960. I’ll write about the bill elsewhere but I wanted to talk briefly about how difficult it is to manage a large hearing on a contentious issue. This particular hearing was held at 9:00…
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New Economic Forecast Available
The Washington Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (of which I am a member) released its Washington State Economic Review on Friday. The document is a pretty good read. It comes out a week before our revenue forecast does and experienced tea leaf readers can often predict the revenue forecast from this document. Flat is the…
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Taxing Gold Bullion?
One of the first things new legislators say to me when they review the “Tax Exemptions 2008” report from the department of revenue is that we should eliminate the tax exemptions for gold bullion and bull semen sales. They stick out as crazy exemptions. NPR even did a story on the bullion loophole. Governor Gregoire…
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Thanks for attending my telephone town hall
We made almost 30,000 calls to people in the 48th district tonight. Over 6000 attended part of the town hall, with about 500 people on the call for most of the time, and 160 die-hards who stayed until the end. I’ve never had more than 200 people at a town hall before, so this reached…