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Washington’s Governor Locke proposes innovative deficit solution

OLYMPIA, WA - With 34 states facing budget deficits that total nearly $60 billion collectively, governors and state lawmakers are scrambling to find solutions. A new budget model announced yesterday by Washington State Governor Gary Locke may be one of the most innovative.

Washington is facing a deficit of $2.5 to $3 billion (10-12 percent of total state revenue) in the upcoming 2003-05 biennium. Conventional thinking says lawmakers must look at the existing budget, adjust for inflationary and caseload increases, and find ways to raise taxes or cut services to maintain the status quo.

Instead, Governor Locke and his budget team decided on ten core functions for Washington state government, identified measurable outcomes, and prioritized agency programs based on their ability to help achieve those ten functions. He was aided in this task by a requirement that Washington state agencies define their core missions and prioritize their programs and budgets accordingly. This model was drafted to allocate money within existing resources.

“We don’t agree with everything Governor Locke has identified as a core function of government, but that doesn’t diminish the value of these tools,” said Bob Williams, president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. “Legislators now have a legitimate place to begin the debate.”

The Washington state-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a free-market public policy research organization, has long advocated core functions and performance-based budgeting.

“This approach is revolutionary and provides tools for states to solve their budget crises without slash and burn strategies,” said Williams. “It’s not a temporary band-aid, but a permanent foundation for responsible state spending now and in the future.”

EFF believes hundreds of millions of dollars currently being lost to excessive bureaucracy would be saved if states focused on organizing their budgets around what lawmakers negotiate as a state’s core governing functions, rather than blindly funding the status quo.

“Implementing this new model will take determined and strong leadership,” said Williams. “There are a lot of special interest groups out there who won’t like it when the focus shifts from maintaining current government services to evaluating whether those services should even be provided by government.”

To view the National Stewardship Project, a study on accountable budgets and core governing principles released jointly by EFF, the Heritage Foundation, and the State Policy Network, click here.

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