Duly Noted Politics

Out of commission, Or, the big story, flying cranes, and deficits

2011-03-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've been off writing for PubliCola since the beginning of January and have left the Duly Noted url to rot. Today, I'll update you on my afternoon off.

The big story (or I thought so, at least)
Remember the Seattle Public Schools scandal about a month back? You know, $1.8 million in misspent funds through a program - the Regional Small Business Development Program - that was supposed to help minority-run businesses get contracts at SPS. The Seattle Times broke the story. We found it intriguing - specifically, the contractors.

On Friday, I broke the news on a contract between WSDOT and the rogue SPS program:

In response to a public disclosure request, WSDOT revealed that it has contracted out support for disadvantaged and minority businesses through the Regional Small Business Development Program (RSBDP), the Seattle Public Schools division headed up by program manager Silas Potter, the man in charge of the SPS program at the center of the $1.8 million scandal, as first reported by the Seattle Times.

According to quarterly and annual reports on WSDOT’s Support Services for Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs), Potter’s RSBDP offered business competitiveness courses to companies with the goal of helping them bid more successfully for WSDOT contracts.

The low level of DBE attendance and the lack of any growth in enrollment at RSBDP classes suggests a similar pattern to that described in the state auditors report on the SPS program.

Money well spent? PubliCola has filed another public disclosure request to find out.

A state auditor’s report on the SPS scandal, first reported by the Seattle Times, revealed that the RSBDP classes were actually attended by the same vendor who was billed as teaching those very courses. The vendors teaching the classes also overbilled for the amount of time spent teaching courses, which often had only a few students.

It's still a developing story. Stay tuned.

What I've been reading
The usual:

Can’t get much clearer than this:

Depending on how you look at it, President Obama is proposing to cut taxes by $2.4 trillion over the next decade, raise them by $700 billion, or raise them by $2.0 trillion.
That’s Donald Marron, president of the Tax Policy Center, and it’s absolutely right.

I keep thinking about this one movie
The Cranes Are Flying. A post-WWII Russian flick, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. One of the best.

Boeing Awarded Tanker Contract!

2011-02-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

A Rundown of the Decision Here.

Health care subsidies.... (boring)

2011-02-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

KLEIN:

For instance: Among the more mind-blowing facts about the health-care system is that the tax break we give to employer-provided insurance dwarfs the cost of the entire Affordable Care Act -- and, if you want to take the concept a bit further, this means those of us who don't get insurance from our employers are being forced, even mandated, to pay for those of us who are. But this break is largely uncontroversial in American politics, while subsidies to help people who can't afford health insurance are extremely controversial.

SPD FORUM GETS NUTS.

2011-02-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

... And yours truly was there to cover it. Fortunately for you - I wrote it on PubliCola, a much wiser platform than the one you currently reside at:

Only one minute into last night’s Stranger-sponsored Police Accountability Forum at City Hall—featuring an eight-person panel that included Mayor Mike McGinn, city council public safety chair Tim Burgess, and Seattle Police Chief John Diaz—people were already shouting. As Diaz responded to the first question—Is there a pattern of police violence against racial minorities in Seattle?—three members of the crowd started shouting—”These were not fucking accidents!”—and had to be removed by security.

Such was the mood of the evening: A mixture of organized protest rally and three-ring circus.

Bookmark it.

Education Reform.

2011-02-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

A snippet from my PubliCola piece from this afternoon:

State Sen. Rodney Tom (D-48, Bellevue) and Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-37, S. Seattle) are pushing education reform legislation backed by the Excellent Schools Now coalition – which includes the Washington State PTA, the League of Education Voters, Washington Alliance of Black School Educators, and the Waiting for Superman crowd at Stand for Children—that would require the upcoming layoffs of 1,500 teachers to be made without regard to seniority and instead be determined by principal evaluations of teachers.

The bills haven’t received a public hearing yet, but already the state teachers union, the Washington Education Association (WEA), is lining up against the proposed reform legislation.

Rich Wood, spokesman for the WEA, spent yesterday in Olympia meeting with legislators. The group’s main complaint is that the bills don’t address the overarching problem: a lack of funding for K-12 education. The Pettigrew-Tom proposal would “undermine our current efforts to improve public education,” Wood says.

The rest, here.

If you're following the session...

2011-01-19T10:21:00.001-08:00

Then it's worth reading Undead Olympia, for some added humor.

Supplemental Budget 2011

2011-01-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

From my PubliCola piece:

State Representative Ross Hunter (D-48, Medina), Chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, released a plan this afternoon to cut $340 million from the remaining six months of the current biennium. Olympia needs to cut $1.1 billion from the current budget. Even after $588 million in cuts from the December special session, Hunter’s new plan still leaves legislators with a $260 million shortfall for the biennium’s remaining six months.

The plan makes $216.5 million in cuts and $123.8 in fund transfers. The bill cuts $173.5 million from the Department of Social and Health Services alone, including $71.4 million in reductions to long-term care services, including reductions in home care hours, and $21.9 million in mental health reductions. The plan keeps K-12 funding stable through the biennium, though cuts higher education by $4.5 million.

“We couldn’t save everything, but we really prioritized core services for kids,” Hunter said in a statement.

The rest.

Slow Blogging Coming

2011-01-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

Readership has been up a bit lately. Why? The special session perhaps? The real session? People are suddenly concerned about losing their health care? What it is exactly, I don't know. Seems like as good a time as any to slow things down. I'll be writing/reporting/interning over at Publicola.net for a few months. To those who read daily, you can expect some slower posts over the next few months. There will also likely be a lot of re-blogging to illustrate the blog's larger themes. Meanwhile, just go read Publicola.

Thanks for reading.

Monday Reading Jar

2011-01-10T09:00:00.001-08:00

It turns out a weekend at home creates lots of opportunity for blogging. The Jar is back, for now.

1. Open Left talks about regressive tax structures - nationwide, and in Washington (with some graphs I almost forgot about!)

2. Adjust the state's tax structure and create new revenue. It's easy:

End sales tax exemption on items used in interstate commerce:

Air, rail, and water transportation companies engaged in interstate or foreign commerce are exempt from sales tax on fuel and other items. U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may tax such items, and many do. JLARC review in 2008 found no clear purpose for the exemption. (Already taxed in 16+ states.)

3. Yesterday's post.

4. How to fix the federal budget deficit? It's easy (Via HowieInSeattle):

5. As a follow up to Saturday's top five films from 2010, my top album of 2010:

Robyn, Body Talk.

Revenue Options For Demoralized State Dems

2011-01-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

At least someone out there is still seriously proposing raising revenue in the coming legislative session...

Washington's Economic Opportunity Institute has released a document with some revenue options that legislators ought to consider in the looming budget session - where $4.6 billion is set to be cut from social programs, education, higher-education, etc. The second largest item after applying sales tax to gasoline purchases is to "End sales tax exemption on items used in interstate commerce." I've heard that one before:

Air, rail, and water transportation companies engaged in interstate or foreign commerce are exempt from sales tax on fuel and other items. U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may tax such items, and many do. JLARC review in 2008 found no clear purpose for the exemption. (Already taxed in 16+ states.)

That change could bring in $609 million.

Next up: "Increase hazardous substance tax." It turns out that I-1053, the measure to require a 2/3 vote to increase revenue, was funding by oil and gas companies who didn't want to see the hazardous substance tax increase (so that we can clean up the mess they make). Raising the tax from 0.7% to 2% would bring in $468.3 million. That's a billion dollars in new revenue right there - almost a quarter of the budget shortfall.

These possibilities are largely ignored in the popular discourse today. Though, lets pause for a minute and compare two things in the most simplistic way possible. An option: Cut 66,000 people from the Basic Health Care Plan or raise the hazardous substance tax on multi-billion dollar fuel corporations. That's an easy decision, but not a popular one.

17 senators can hold these increases hostage. Legislators aren't feeling too inclined to pursue these options, or closing corporate loopholes, or zeroing in on tax exemptions. When I sat in on a legislative forum in Bellevue Thursday evening, the mood wasn't much different.

The closet was empty, they said. As EOI showcases, however, it's not.

Because I Feel Like It: An Overdue End Of Year Movie List

2011-01-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

Diverting away from usual budget commentary, an end of year list: My Top 5 "New" Movies That I Saw In 2010. I say "new" because multiple of these movies came out abroad pre-2010 before reaching American theateres this year.

In no particular order (except the first):

A Prophet

I Am Love

Toy Story 3

The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy (1,3,2)

The Town

A Prophet is hands down the best film I've seen in many years. It's extraordinarily difficult to think of a comparable movie that delivered such raw emotional content in recent years while confronting the brutal topic of violence in French prisons.

I slacked on movies this year, admittedly. The real-world left little time to enjoy the oscar-season cinema in Seattle, as I usually do.

In other audio-visual commentary, HBO's The Wire is at the top of my list for Best TV Shows Of All Time. The show's focus on urban drug culture, institutional decay, corruption, and the stagnancy of public safety policy in Baltimore is raw, pristine, TV and ripe viewing for anyone who thinks they understand poverty, drugs, and those stuck in that vicious cycle.

Pick Your Own Losers

2011-01-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

Washington's League of Education Voters has put together a useful budget site which allows the user to check off cuts to make up the $4.6 billion shortfall. You can opt to "eliminate National Board bonuses for teachers" serving in low-income schools, "end automatic pension increases for retired teachers,""eliminate the Basic Health Plan," and a host of other options.

If anything, this puzzle provides context to the enormity of the decisions facing legislators over the next few months. It's no laughing matter. Check it.

"Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector"

2011-01-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor on President Clinton, wrote an editorial in the Huffington Post today. It's not a bad analysis of conservative tirades against public workers. Title: "The Shameful Attack on Public Employees." Shameful indeed.

Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.

It's far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public's work -- sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees -- to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican's Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that's too big.

The kicker:

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges -- the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be -- all need at least four years of college.

Compare apples to apples and and you'd see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)

I would point out that the areas where public sector workers do make more than their private sector counterparts are in those occupations where a college degree is not required. For those jobs, it's fair that workers receive a higher pay check from the state rather than face exploitation in the private sector.

A Broken "Social Contract"

2011-01-04T14:24:00.001-08:00

State Rep. Reuven Carlyle over at his superbly honest and thoughtful blog:

Publicola hosted a Seattle legislator forum where we discussed tough issues in a friendly, genuine settling and outlined our thoughts about the 2011 legislative session. I received a particularly direct and thoughtful question from a public school teacher named “Eric” who argued that Olympia has increased workload without salary increases, withheld cost of living adjustments, and instituted new work requirements that consume time without incremental compensation.

My answer, likely unsatisfactory to Eric, was that teachers are part of the fabric of public employees who have to recognize that the people of our state are feeling a sense of anxiety about the social contract that once existed between public employees and citizens. In essence, figuratively, it used to be that public employees received lower salaries and benefits in exchange for the promise of lifetime employment. That social contract has been broken by years of campaign politics. We now find ourselves living in a world where most people don’t have pensions or sufficient salaries or job security, to say nothing of automatic cost of living adjustments for pensions or salaries.

[...] Today teachers have the job protections, benefits and work rules of a trade yet become agitated at best when legislators don’t consider them professionals with regard to control over curriculum, standards, measurement, accountability, results and other outcomes. Understandably, teachers want what everyone wants–the best benefits of both sides of the coin. Full bargained benefits including tenure, payment for any extra time at work, and other such work rules, but the control and responsibilities of a professional service provider.

The emphasis is my own.

More Anti-Union, Anti-Public Employee Nonsense...From a Democrat

2011-01-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Adam Vogt, a Washington native, identifies as a Democrat and writes for Crosscut.com. Yesterday, he published an editorial of sorts - void of fact, of course - on his anti-union views. Unfortunately, the piece read like Tim Pawlenty's recent anti-union/anti-public sector op-eds published in the Wall Street Journal.

Let's take a look:

It all started back in high school when I took a part-time job bagging groceries. When I received my first paycheck, my jaw dropped. Between union dues, the largest culprit, and FICA taxes, my paltry wage of $5.50 per hour fell to about $3.50 for each 60 minutes of labor. Thus began my skepticism of unions.

Little does he know, that this year the grocery worker union helped to preserve health care benefits for 25,000 thousands workers in the Puget Sound region. Vogt was only in high school then and probably wasn't too concerned about his health care benefits. I'm betting a 40-year old lifetime employee of QFC may feel a bit different about the union and its bargaining power. He continues:

But government employees have it pretty good these days: high wages, extensive benefits, the near-impossibility of being fired, to name just a few pluses they enjoy. As a current federal employee, I have a hard time listening to my coworkers complain about a two-year pay freeze that isn’t really a freeze at all? Again, in this economy I’m just happy to have a job!

With more news coming out each day about devastating budget challenges at the federal, state and local level, it’s time for public employees and their union benefactors to make some concessions.

Yet government workers are currently making concessions, willingly and unwillingly. A 3% cut in pay this year for state workers in Washington... Higher monthly premiums... Unpaid days off... Jobs lost. In fact, look how the workforce has dwindled...

Decline in Washington State Employees

Still angry? Check out the comments, here.

The State of Washington's Public Workforce: Part 1

2011-01-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

Via the Department of Personell:

Number of Washington State Government Workers

Monthly Decline in WA Government Workforce

The huge expansion of government during the 'great recession' is, where, exactly?

Between July 2008 and September 2009, the total workforce headcount declined by 2,769. This decline was driven by the Governor’s August 2008 hiring freeze, as well as mandatory budget cuts that resulted in layoffs.

Source.

Counterfactuals

2010-12-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

If the Republican Governor from Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, is really going to run for President he should stop writing bogus op-eds in the Wall Street Journal that are full of the same misleading and untrue claims, including the claim that government workers are paid outlandish salaries, that the government has hired 590,000 employees since 2008, and that unions are stealing everyones money. Sigh. Pawlenty:

Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.

Federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector. And across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt.

Luckily, better bloggers than myself are out there knocking down all these baseless accusations of government spending and high taxes. Krugman:

What’s going on?

Well, the answer turns out to be that during the summer, a number of the usual suspects made assertions of a big increase in government employment; here’s a sample. And as of the summer, there were in fact substantially more government employees than there had been in early 2009.

Why? The Census, which temporarily employed a lot of people, as it does every decade.

Here’s a chart of government employment back to 1999:

Problem solved. Yet the cyber "spat"continues. I couldn't help post about this after reading Jonathan Chait's blog post on the subject, titled "Zombie Lies Try To Eat Krugman's Brain."

Millionaire Flight Revisited

2010-12-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

This came up quite often during the 1098 campaign. In fact, a similar thing happened in New Jersey. The CBPP's Off the the Charts Blog explains how tax hikes on the rich don't send people flying out of a state:

Earlier this week, a Journal editorial pointed to new data showing Oregon’s recent tax increase took in less revenue than predicted as proof that people responded to the tax increase by leaving the state.

Here’s what actually happened. The new data show that last year, the number of Oregon households with incomes high enough to pay a recently enacted tax increase was some 10,000 smaller than state officials had predicted. However, the total number of tax returns filed exceeded the state’s predictions, as the Oregon Center for Public Policy explained. That hardly makes a case for outmigration.

It’s far more likely that fewer wealthy people filed tax returns because there were fewer wealthy people, period. Incomes go down in recessions, and the biggest drops often are among the wealthiest people, whose incomes are made up more of capital gains which tumble when the stock market drops.

I’ll repeat what I said before: the next time you hear someone saying a state should cut taxes to keep the wealthy from departing, keep in mind that in difficult economic times like these, most of them are moving down, not out.

Brenden Williams Speaks! Again.

2010-12-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Over at Publicola State Rep. Brenden Williams is fired up - though resigning...

A state budget proposal that leaves over one million Washingtonians without health care was offered the same day outgoing Democratic Congressional super-majorities were facilitating President Obama’s tax proposal to create the greatest income inequality in the history of the United States of America. The Seattle Times may not be concerned by this juxtaposition—but Democrats should be.

How can a moral society reduce hours for home care clients by 10 percent while retaining a tax preference for the very architects of our global economic recession: Wall Street banks? How can a moral society close community health clinics while requiring taxpayers to keep subsidizing cleanup of Big Oil’s stormwater pollution? How can a moral society allow its public servants to keep open a private dining room designed to isolate legislators from the public while considering eliminating the State Food Assistance Program? “Happy to be here” cannot be the dominant political ideology of those who serve us in these most challenging of times.

After watching Williams argue against initiatives 1100 and 1105 back in October his frustration with the state of affairs in Washington was obvious. He seems to have his head on straight. It's a shame Olympia is losing him.

'Countdown to 2011: 10 Initiatives Andrew Would Love (or Hate) To See On The Ballot in 2011'

2010-12-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

And here's part of that Countdown to 2011 piece I was talking about:

In 2010 state voters were confronted with a surplus of ballot measures that served as individual referendums local tax policy and the role of government. The tax-hating forces of the right won out, and as a result, nearly 100,000 Washingtonians may lose health coverage over the next six months, 60,000 state employees will see their paychecks shrink by 3% and see their premiums rise, K-12 education will lose $1.5 billion in the next biennium, and programs that serve state’s neediest will be completely dismembered. The $4.5 billion deficit is in larger part a result of the deepest recession in nearly a century, but society’s inability to agree on how to adequately fund government has worsened what could have otherwise been a manageable fiscal drought.

In 2011, we will face this familiar dialogue once again. It is my hope that the voices of reason will win out, and that initiatives with the people of Washington at heart, will prevail. On that light-hearted note I bring you 10 Initiatives - some probable, some not - that I would love or hate to see on the 2011 ballot.

First, what I’d like to see.

1. Carbon WA’s initiative is only in the preliminary stages, though it’s promising on a political and policy level. The initiative would place a tax on carbon and direct the received revenue to lower the sales, B&O, and property taxes that Washingtonians despise (See Monday’s article on the initiative for details).

5. Locally, an initiative on this Alaskan Way Viaduct-replacement tunnel would be a welcomed measure- if only to get another read on where the public stands in 2011. The initiatives filed so far are a bit too late in the game to actually halt the tunnel’s construction, but could signal a way forward with regard to the plaguing ‘cost-overruns’ issue.

6. Food Carts On Every Corner. Let's do it.

Initiatives I Hope to Avoid:

7. Tim Eyman’s anti-tax, anti-government “Car Owner’s Bill of Rights” is an initiative filed shortly after the November election that would reduce car tab and licensing fees and prohibit local jurisdictions from raising these fees to generate revenue. First he took the state, now he’ll take the cities. It’s an obvious attempt to drain city budgets - but what about those who don’t own cars who’ll undoubtedly be affected by lost revenue, and lost services? If history is of any indication, voters will follow Eyman’s lead.

[...]

10. An initiative barring Tim Eyman from filing or writing initiatives at the state level or for local jurisdictions. It’s no secret that Eyman’s corporate backed initiatives have contributed, more than any other single policy, to the budget cuts in this state over the last three years. We’d do ourselves a disservice be failing to act on this obvious deterrent to a well-functioning society. Who’s with me?

Hop on over to Seattlest for the real deal.

The Ultimate Disconnect, Or, Duly Noted Politics’ 200th Post.

2010-12-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

Seattle Central Public Library

My editor at Seattlest tasked me with a ‘Countdown to 2011’ piece on ten initiatives or policies I’d like to see – and avoid – in 2011. Christmas came early! Some of my initiatives are a bit odd, others are actually plausible and already set in motion. Most of all they seem to represent my unwillingness to accept the 2010 election’s anti-tax, ant-state, anti-government, anti-social services ‘mandate.’ I don’t believe the same voters who 17 years ago approved the Basic Health Plan would now vote for a set of policies that would stomp the program to the ground – likely eliminating it come March. A recent poll confirms these suspicions – over half of Washingtonians would prefer to maintain our current level of social services.

Why then did voters overwhelmingly approve Initiative 1053, 1107, and reject 1098? For a host of reasons, I suppose. The foremost reason, however, lies in the disconnect between the voter in the ballot box and the political consequences of those cast votes. This is nothing new, of course. All indications from Nov. 2nd (and beyond) suggest that voters are self-serving opportunists, but when polled, are slightly more genuine and concerned about such things as public services, health care, programs for impoverished residents, and – more than anything - education (even after voting down I-1098’s $2 billion a year in education funding). It is mindboggling and I’m not sure I will quite understand why (usually) liberal (sometimes progressive!) Washingtonians voted the way they did in 2010. Looking ahead to 2011 I am crossing my fingers for a slightly better outcome.

As the experiment that is Duly Noted Politics crosses 200 posts, the drive to reverse this troubling disconnect prevails. Though posts as of late have been slow, small, and certainly not stimulative, I am committed to making DNP work, even as I spend a good portion of my time trying to make money doing things that actually pay.

I am grateful to those who read Duly Noted Politics during this holiday season and for those who have followed the blog over the last 5 months – if you’re out there, thanks for reading.

Cheerful News

2010-12-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

From The PI:

By next week, more than a half-million residents in the state will have collected almost $4.7 billion in unemployment benefits. Both numbers are records.

"This has been another demanding year for Employment Security, but even more challenging for those who still can't find a job after months and months of looking," said Joel Sacks, deputy commissioner of the Employment Security Department, in a news release.

Take On The Tax Exemptions

2010-12-22T09:50:00.000-08:00

Alex Stone at EOI:

With unemployment stuck at around 9%, more Washingtonians will need help to weather the ongoing economic storm. More than 30,000 people have exhausted their state unemployment benefits, leading to more applications for food stamps and Medicaid — while the BHP has a rapidly growing waiting list.

And yet, when legislators convene in January, many will try to ignore the elephant in the Capitol Rotunda: tens of billions of dollars in tax exemptions that have been carved out of the state budget over the years, with the helpful guidance of corporate lobbyists.

The Governor can’t unilaterally bring order to the morass of tax exemptions in Washington state’s tax code. But legislators do have a choice this January: They can choose to scrutinize tax exemptions as closely as they do every other budget item, and make sure every tax preference and subsidy proves to have a positive return on investment for Washington taxpayers.

The post goes on to illustrate, in table form, the programs that would be saved if the legislature addressed such things as the sales tax exemption on interstate commerce. Very important. Read it all here.

A Preview

2010-12-22T09:24:00.000-08:00

10 Initiatives I would Love/Hate To See On The Ballot in 2011:

In 2010 state voters were confronted with a surplus of ballot measures that served as individual referendums local tax policy and the role of government. The tax-hating forces of the right won out, and as a result, nearly 100,000 Washingtonians may lose health coverage over the next six months, K-12 education will lose $1.5 billion, 60,000 state employees will see their paychecks shrink by 3% and see their premiums rise, and programs that serve state’s neediest will be completely dismembered. The $4.5 billion deficit is in larger part a result of the deepest recession in nearly a century, but society’s inability to agree on how to adequately fund government has worsened what could have otherwise been a manageable fiscal drought. In 2011, we will face this familiar dialogue once again. It is my hope that the voices of reason will win out, and that initiatives with the people of Washington at heart, will prevail.

The rest... Tomorrow.

A Washington Carbon Tax?

2010-12-21T10:19:00.000-08:00

My Seattlest Post from this morning:

Smoke pollution near Ballard Bridge, 1957 by Seattle Municipal Archives from our Flickr pool
The 2010 election threw us a for a loop, and deep into a fiscal ditch. Washingtonians and Seattleites alike had to sift through a mess of initiatives that in one way or another represented our century-long dialogue over how to fund our state government and to what level.

Knowingly or unknowingly, voters opted for a limited government that is now beginning to take shape. This next year two professors, including our city's own "stand-up economist", are launching an initiative to do what the immobile federal government cannot bring itself to do: regulate carbon.

Carbon WA would implement a carbon tax in the state - a bit different from the cap-and-trade proposals we hear so much about - but would basically achieve the same thing.

According to Carbon WA's website the new tax would model itself almost entirely on the recent carbon tax implemented in British Columbia. Specifically, it would "follow BC's lead by implementing a carbon tax on fossil fuels of $30 per ton of CO2 (equivalent to about $0.30 per gallon of gasoline, $0.03 per kWh of coal-fired power, or $0.015 per kWh of natural gas-fired power)." And if you're worried about the regressivity of such a tax - they've got you covered. The resulting revenue, of which there will be a sizable amount, will be used to reduce the most troubling aspects of our tax structure, things like the business and occupation tax, the property tax, and the dreaded sales tax. That's the bait - pay more here, and a lot less here. The boys at Sightline call this type of policy a tax shift - and a good one at that. I suspect the "real" Washington will call it something quite different.

The Carbon WA initiative is itself a response to a couple of things. At the federal level the possibility of passing a cap-and-trade bill is now almost laughable due to large GOP gains. Locally, the state legislature has opted not to participate in the Western Climate Initiative, a coalition of Pacific Northwest states and some Canadian provinces who would develop a regional cap-and-trade system. Proponents of the Carbon WA initiative are "uncertain" about WCI's prospects and take no position on the matter.

Carbon WA's prospects are also uncertain, however. So far 64,500 have pledged their signature and $7,005 has been pledged in monetary support. There is plenty if work to be done before this initiative can become anything more than a website. You can be a part of that by volunteering, if you are so inclined, here.