Gregoire sets right tone

GOV. Chris Gregoire is saying the right things about the state budget. Tough things. Of course, action is what finally matters, but if the talk is not right the action will not be. And the talk is right.

This is different from her first term. Then she also faced a recession, which seemed bad at the time. Then she also heard voices like ours, warning her to cut back. Instead she spent boldly, and the economy made it all good. She was, in a word, lucky.

Then her luck ran out. For two years she has tried to save state programs with a jumble bag of sin taxes, fund transfers, federal money and labor concessions. After all of it, the state faces an immediate deficit of several hundred million, a next-biennium deficit of $3 billion and a biennium-after-that deficit of about $9 billion.

Facing red ink deeper than Lake Chelan, she has come to conclusions that appear to her, and to us, as obvious — that the state has to evaluate everything it does, with an eye to doing less. And she says she is frustrated by all the people who still cannot see this.

Each group that lives on state money feels it has given up a lot. Each has laid claim to the first new dollar the state has in hand. "Everybody has that expectation," Gregoire told us during an editorial board meeting — and it is not possible.

And so our governor is asking agency heads to re-evaluate all programs, starting with these questions:

• Is the activity essential, or can it be delayed or eliminated?

• Does state government have to do it, or can others do it?

• Are there better ways to do it, and better ways to pay for it?

Gregoire said she will no longer accept the excuse that a task is mandated by state law. "That can be changed," she said. "We are state law."

The same goes for the excuse that a program receives a federal match. "We are the other part of the match," she said.

The state must pay pensions already earned, but it may change its pension plans going forward, and Gregoire has asked a panel of experts to suggest ways to do that. "I put it all on the table," she said.

It is the right talk. State lawmakers' tough budget talk the past couple years was not backed up by action. The governor's talk must be followed by real action.