Brown budget looks red

Senator Lisa Brown’s budget doesn’t work because:

It is unsustainable. For new expenditures, Brown’s budget allows an unrealistic $258 million next biennium and $169 million in the unrestricted reserve account for the current biennium.

It will potentially ruin our state’s credit rating. The bond rating firms of Standard & Poor, Moody’s and Fitch take dim views of states that run budget and cash deficits and borrow too much on unsure revenue sources. Moody’s has already sent us a warning.

It balances the budget by mortgaging the future. $753 million of the amount Senator Brown uses to balance this year’s budget is money that is here today, but gone tomorrow. Part of it is taken from the reserve, which was reduced from $1.2 billion last year to $300 million in this budget. The rest of it comes from a one-time hit: $420 million from tobacco “securitization.”

The “securitization” comes from revenue bonds issued to buyers who, for $525 million now, would forever receive a portion of future tobacco revenues that would normally go toward providing services to future generations. The general fund would receive $420 million of the $525 million. As part of the ripple effect, future budgets will lose $75 million each biennium.

It depends on questionable savings sources. Brown claims her budget will cut FTEs, travel and other services. This is hard to believe since the legislature does not budget any of those items. In the past, these legislative good intentions have been ignored.

It shortchanges some of our state’s most vulnerable citizens. As usual, budget cuts are made in programs such as foster care and family reconciliation services instead of from areas already identified as a problem, such as the 30,000+ ineligible people receiving state-paid health care.

It forces us to depend on gambling proceeds to achieve a solvent state budget. Not smart! How much does state government already spend on gambling-related personal and family remedies?

It pits one group of workers against another. State employees’ COLAs are decreased from a 2.6% increase to 1.5%. But education employees’ COLAs increase from 3.1% to 3.6% because they are attached to the Seattle CPI.

“Making Senator Brown’s budget work is like trying to squeeze yourself into a bad girdle,” said Lynn Harsh, executive director of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. “You think you’ve fixed the bulge in one place and it just pops out in another. The state budget should be on a diet.”

Contact: Lynn Harsh, Executive Director, (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org