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A genuinely good idea tends to pop out from among the nondescript crowd of been-theres and done-thats. State Sen. Derek Kilmer’s proposal to create jobs without new taxes looks like that kind of idea.

The Gig Harbor Democrat – an economic development specialist who plays down his Oxford doctorate – knows that government best builds the economy by building infrastructure. Such things as sewers, water lines, highways, ports, schools – the necessary foundations of private businesses.

With tentative support from both Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature, Kilmer is proposing legislation that would – this gets complicated – finance major job-creating projects with bonds backed by tax revenues already flowing into two existing state funds.

The funds pay for major public works improvements and environmental protection projects. They are replenished with taxes collected from utilities, solid waste operations, and companies that market pesticides and other hazardous substances.

Kilmer would divert relatively small side streams from those incoming taxes to finance revenue bonds that would immediately raise hundreds of millions of dollars for projects already planned but not yet funded.

Port improvements and short-line railroads that could expand state exports, for example, or restoration of polluted Tideflats land that companies would love to move into.
The idea would simultaneously deal with multiple issues:

• Unemployment and recession. The construction work would create temporary jobs; more important, the completed infrastructure would help spawn private investment and permanent jobs.
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One question for the people accusing Gov. Chris Gregoire of grabbing for new taxes instead of downsizing state government:

Where on Earth have you been for the last three years?

Faced with the worst fiscal crisis in a lifetime, she and the Legislature have been paring state services relentlessly.

The K-12 system has been squeezed. Washington’s public colleges have lost a third to a half of their state funding, depending on the school. Health insurance for the poor has been nearly strangled. Many state employees have had wages cut or been laid off. State agencies – large and small – have been turned upside down and had the change shaken out of their pockets.

Even assuming Gregoire got her half-percent sales tax increase, her plan would still inflict brutal new cuts on state social services. Tax increase or no tax increase, her budget kisses off health coverage for 55,000 poor people, for example. Much of the state safety net would be gone one way or another.

She’s proposing the half-cent sales tax – and several smaller increases – to prevent the additional loss of funding for property-poor school districts, another devastating hit to public colleges and the early release of felons, among other things.

Neither the governor nor the Legislature can raise taxes unilaterally; they must get approval from the electorate. If the ultimate choice is between new revenues and further damage to public education, the public ought to be given the chance to make that decision.
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How bad do the state’s looming budget cuts look? So bad that many Washington school superintendents – people who understand the connection between classroom time and learning – are urging a shorter school year.

A terrible idea on the face of it. But it may be less terrible than what it might avert: A drastic cut to the levy equalization money that helps children in property-poor school districts get an education comparable to what their peers get in wealthier districts.

To help close a $2 billion revenue shortfall, the governor has proposed to cut levy equalization by half. This would strip millions from Tacoma, Puyallup, University Place and other districts with lean tax bases. Well-off districts – think Seattle, Mercer Island and Edmonds – wouldn’t be touched.

A coalition of 29 Puget Sound superintendents say that a shorter school year for all districts – 175 instead of 180 days – would spread the cuts more fairly. The idea is to squeeze schools equally across the state rather than heap the pain on the districts that can least afford it.

If lawmakers are forced to choose between equalization and a shorter school year, equalization should not be sacrificed. Time spent in the classroom does matter.
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Update: The raises recommended for Tacoma Fire Chief Ronald Stephens and Police Chief Don Ramsdell have been withdrawn in light of Tacoma’s budget shortfall, according to city spokesman Rob McNair-Huff.

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Onward and upward goes the compensation of some government employees, even during the deepest economic distress in generations.

The latest bit of government largess – 5 percent pay increases – has gone to Tacoma Fire Chief Ronald Stephens and Police Chief Don Ramsdell. Their salaries will now be, respectively, $181,534 and $180,551.

That may or may not be too much in a city the size of Tacoma. What’s interesting is the thinking behind the raise: These two had to be paid more because they were in danger of being overtaken by their subordinates.

Without the increase, the city’s deputy fire chiefs and assistant police chiefs – all unionized, despite their high-management status – stood to make more money than their bosses.

Government compensation is rife with that kind of logic: Someone else gets more, so our guys ought to get even more than them. What clobbers taxpayers are the constant rounds of leap-frogging between one jurisdiction’s pay schedule and the pay schedules of “comparable” jurisdictions.

Public officials have a quaint notion of “market” pay. In the private sector, “market” is roughly defined as what you have to pay good employees to make them want to stick around. Otherwise, they complain with their feet.

In government, market pay is generally defined as what someone in a similar position in another government makes – regardless of whether attrition is a threat.

The City of Tacoma recently passed out millions of dollars worth of raises to its employees on the basis of such market comparisons, even as a $26 million hole has opened in its current biennial budget. The raises reflect the city council’s expensive policy of paying workers at least 70 percent of the highest pay given to their counterparts in similar cities.
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Two proposed amendments to the Washington Constitution are on the November ballot, one a simple bit of legal housekeeping, the other a crucial demand for spending discipline.

Senate Joint Resolution 8205 is the housekeeper. It would repeal an obsolete 60-day residency requirement for voting, bringing the law in line with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding requirements of more than 30 days.

End of story. Pass it.

Senate Joint Resolution 8206 is much bigger. It proposes to curb the boom-and-bust cycle that has plagued state budgeting for decades.

Historically, the Legislature has pretty much spent whatever money came its way without much thought to the future. During the boom years, spending boomed. During the bust years, the Legislature has been forced to bust programs it boomed when things were flush.

Made no sense, but that’s what lawmakers – particularly Democrats – do when they’ve got a surplus and powerful lobbies clamoring for a piece of it.
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The state budget proposed by House Democrats this week is ugly but honest.

It was going to be ugly no matter what – given the Grand Canyon-sized revenue hole the Legislature faces – but it could so easily have been dishonest.

All kinds of strange and foolish ideas surfaced as the sheer brutality of the next biennium’s shortfall came into focus. There was talk of borrowing one-time cash against future revenue, of pretending that there’d be 25 months of revenue to cover 24 months of spending, of expanding gambling and legalizing drugs …

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Fingers crossed, but it’s looking like the Legislature won’t chuck Washington’s heritage out the window for the sake of minimal savings during a distressed economy.

Gov. Chris Gregoire had proposed to mothball the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane to pick up what amounts to budget dust in the face of a multibillion-dollar shortfall.

The absurdity of the move is illustrated by its effect on the Tacoma museum. The governor wasn’t proposing to raze the structure on Pacific Avenue; her budget would …

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Closing a public school is an excruciating experience for everyone – students, parents, teachers, school boards and administrators.

That’s especially true for a comprehensive high school like Tacoma’s Foss, whose distinguished academic programs draw students from the entire city.

But even Foss’ most ardent supporters ought to hold their fire until Tacoma School Superintendent Art Jarvis can clarify the impacts of not closing Foss and several small elementary schools.

As he points out, mothballing Foss would save a full $2 million of the $5 million that must be carved out of the school district’s spending next year. The temporary closure of some elementary schools would likewise achieve major savings on administration and overhead.

Tacomans must understand the alternatives, and the administration itself doesn’t have them worked out yet. It is crunching the numbers to determine how that $5 million funding gap might be filled without closing schools.

More money could no doubt be squeezed out of the administrative budget, though Jarvis says he’s already done that repeatedly in recent years. Getting all the way to $5 million could require wholesale layoffs of teachers and expansion of class sizes, and perhaps the elimination of precious electives and extracurricular programs.
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