Gov. Jay Inslee rolls out his supplemental spending plan for 2013-15.
OLYMPIA, Dec. 18.—Gov. Jay Inslee rolled out a supplemental budget proposal for 2014 Tuesday in which the most salient feature is the absence of drama – none of the whopping shortfalls that have forced the Legislature to grind and cut and search for money under the seat-cushions. But just wait for 2015, he said – you can count on another bruising battle as the state looks for new money to pay for K-12 education.
The governor’s supplemental budget proposal amounts to what lawmakers like to call ‘budget dust’ – a $110 million bump to the $33.6 billion 2013-15 budget that was passed by the Legislature earlier this year.
So the governor used his moment in the budget spotlight Tuesday to point out that another big battle is coming next year when the state will face billions of dollars in new obligations due in large part to the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision, which mandates spending increases for K-12 education. “Today’s budget is one that holds steady for now, but that will not be enough next year. The simple fact is this. The people need to understand it in our state. Barring unforeseen dramatic improvements in our economy, we will face a sizeable shortfall next year as we begin the work on next biennium’s budget.”
What it means is that the next year will see no big budget battles like those that have consumed the Legislature since the onset of recession in the fall of 2008. But the governor pointed out that some $5 billion will be needed over the next two biennia – from 2015 through 2019 – in order to meet court-mandated requirements for basic education. He isn’t proposing anything at this point, but he suggests another war on loopholes is in the offing.
Eyes on 2015
Lack of drama: Senate Ways and Means Chair Andy Hill, R-Redmond, says the Senate deserves some credit.
A few words of explanation about the budget process are probably necessary. The state makes the big decisions in odd-numbered years when it adopts two-year budgets, and it makes course-corrections in the even-numbered years. Every year the governor gets the ball rolling with a budget proposal prior to the start of the regular legislative session; the Legislature takes it from there. Modest improvements in the economy over the last six months mean smooth sailing in 2014. The Legislature can avoid the big cuts that have come one year after the next ever since the economy tanked. But some of that also is due to a spending plan adopted this year that did not leave things out of whack.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Andy Hill, R-Redmond, said the fiscal hawks in the Senate deserve at least some of the credit. The Senate is the hands of a Republican-leaning majority coalition that last session eschewed all talk of tax increases and big new spending obligations and still managed to pump $1 billion into K-12 education to comply with the court order. The budget also managed to avoid a higher education tuition increase for the first time since 1986. Hill said, “The great news is that this is the first time since 2008 that we don’t have a deficit coming into the Legislature in January. A lot of that is due to the bipartisan budget that we worked so hard on last year.”
And since all the talk Tuesday was of 2015, not 2014, it is worth pointing out that the state’s economic forecasters project that the state will have another $1.8 billion in revenue next time it writes a two-year budget. That’s enough for the Legislature’s fiscal conservatives to raise questions about whether a big tax increase in 2015 is really necessary. It’s a little soon for that debate, Hill said. “The voters’ appetite for tax increases has not really been large,” he said. “In a lot of ways, raising taxes is the lazy way out. If you have a problem it is very easy to raise taxes. The harder problem is when you dig in and ask, ‘how are we running government, how do we spend money, how do we reprioritize.’ “
The governor offered a perhaps-sarcastic two-word response when asked at his news conference about the credit due to the Legislature’s sharp-penciled budget writers. What would he say to those who argue the Senate did him a favor? “Thank you,” he said. “Next question?”
Modest Spending Increases
The supplemental spending plan includes:
— $8 million for a legal settlement requiring the state to significantly expand mental health services for children.
— $10 million for rate increases for family home child care providers, awarded during union contract talks.
— $11 million to cover firefighting costs incurred in last season’s wildfires.
— $7 million for increased prison capacity.
Though it also contains some new money for education programs, it dodges the issue of a cost-of-living increase for teachers. Initiative 732, sponsored by the Washington Education Association and approved by Washington voters in 2000, requires regular cost-of-living increases for teachers, but most years the Legislature has suspended the requirement. Inslee’s budget would do it again. Step increases for experience and other measures have increased salaries over time, however. Inslee said there aren’t the votes for the taxes that would be required to pay for a cost-of-living increase in 2014, but he promised he would make the pitch in 2015. “Teachers have not gotten the voter-mandated cost of living adjustment since 2008. That situation is untenable, and I fully intend to rectify it next year. The state employees have also gone without increases since 2008. That is just too long to wait. So in the next biennium we fully intend to address those issues.”
A posting on the teacher’s union website declared “educators across the state are extremely disappointed.”
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