State budget is officially signed — and utterly unsustainable

GOV. Chris Gregoire has signed the supplemental budget for the year to end June 30, 2011. It is not sustainable.

The budget pays for current programs by diverting money from long-term investments like water treatment and contributions to state employee pension funds. It relies on one-time federal money and on college tuition increases too large to be repeated indefinitely. It is a budget that keeps most programs alive and most state workers employed, while taking the least possible responsibility for the long term.

Budgeting this way is a failure of leadership — of the governor and of House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle; Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane; Senate Ways & Means Chair Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, and others. In the Senate majority caucus, Rodney Tom, D-Medina and vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, opposed this budget. Other Senate Democrats who voted against the budget include Mary Margaret Haugen, Camano Island; Steve Hobbs, Lake Stevens; Derek Kilmer, Spokane; and Tim Sheldon, Potlatch.

The budget is carried on the backs of the people, who are in the same recession the state is. We had our own burdens to carry. We have had to adjust, to reset our plans. The state, for the most part, has not. Officials talked about abolishing boards and commissions, and legislators zapped a few ones you've never heard of. But they didn't have the courage even to get rid of the state liquor stores.

State agencies could have rid themselves of staff people — planners, office assistants and redundant managers. For the most part, they have not.

The governor could have forced the reopening of state employee contracts, so that state employees would pay more than 12 percent of their health-insurance premiums — a share more like what private employees pay. There was a way to do this.

The Legislature has just saddled the private sector with a tax increase of $800 million a year. This is more than enough. From now on, the people and their legislators need to put further tax increases out of their minds. They need to reset state government so that its appetites match its revenue. The state must live with the revenue it has.

If this sounds like a Republican program, remember that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke did a version of it seven years ago. He called it Priorities of Government, and it worked. Something like it could be used again.

This is the issue that should inform voters in the midterm elections in November.

Among Democrats in the state Senate, five voted no on the supplemental budget: Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island; Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens; Derek Kilmer, D-Spokane; Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, and Rodney Tom, D-Bellevue. This editorial didn't name them all.