Melodramatic Legislature botches smart decisions

EVEN amid the nation's epic financial crisis, the Washington Legislature, quite unlike Congress, still adheres to its self-congratulatory rituals, glacial pace and budget-cuts-above-leadership customs.

After wasting time on dramas like filing a false police report on a lobbyist, passing myriad floor resolutions ("we support Miss Washington!"), and squandering a day's worth of potential floor action honoring its own dead in a candlelit ceremony, the Legislature produced its first proposed two-year budget on Day 78 of the scheduled 105-day session.

Having stalled on making the case internally, let alone externally, concerning the severity of the state's budget shortfall, initial budget proposals resorted to savaging education and social services.

Despite bold talk of "no sacred cows," there are clearly some fatted bovines no one will sacrifice.

Left intact would be more than 580 tax loopholes. Because closing them could be characterized as tax increases — anathema to the timid — substantive savings could at least be found in rational criminal-justice policy changes.

After all, in his State of the Judiciary address, Chief Supreme Court Justice Gerry Alexander suggested lawmakers examine the state's "current sentencing regime." He noted Washington's prison population has exploded — by another 2,000 inmates in just five years — while overall crime substantially declined.

Unfortunately, too many are willing to effectively punish the innocent in order to punish the guilty.

Case in point: A House bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana was denied a hearing. It could have saved millions.

Even Sarah Palin's Alaska allows possessing an ounce of marijuana in one's home. In Nebraska, up to a pound gets you only a week in jail. In Washington, however, possessing even 1.4 ounces of marijuana is a felony netting you five years in prison.

Simply put, some would, in effect, deny the Basic Health Plan to 41,000 citizens in order to avoid asking the hard questions about drug policy that even moderates like U.S. Sen. Jim Webb are raising.

Similarly, a hearing was denied for a House bill reducing costs by eliminating the death penalty in favor of life incarceration. Even conservative New Mexico's Legislature voted to abolish the death penalty — and Gov. Bill Richardson, a lifelong death-penalty supporter, agreed.

Yet some would, in effect, eliminate higher-education slots in order to continue pursuing costly vengeance in murder cases.

Proposed budgeting makes clear the moral trade-offs. Our future K-12 and higher-education investment would be devastated by as much as $1.3 billion cut from an inadequate base. Moreover, despite more than $2 billion in increased Medicaid assistance from the federal stimulus package, the state would loot Medicaid funding for our most vulnerable.

Because Medicaid is a federal-state partnership, cutting Medicaid loses federal matching funds — profoundly de-stimulatory to Washington's economy, as Medicaid largely goes to caregiver wages, which are spent.

For example, a $3.8 million state boarding-home-care cut surrenders $5.6 million in federal funds. And bankrupted long-term-care facilities — particularly rural, high-Medicaid nursing homes — will close throughout the state.

This leaves the future particularly bleak for caregivers and those citizens with disabilities they care for. Similarly, the future may be no brighter for my two nephews — both first-graders — with disabilities. Under one budget proposal, special-education funding for K-4 class size would be reduced $3.9 million (as part of a $297 million K-4 cut affecting my kindergartner, too).

Should my sister comfort my nephews with the fact that our criminal-justice-sentencing practices — and special-interest tax breaks — were left sacrosanct? Or should she tell them that, while slashing services for those with disabilities, the decision was made to actually increase our state's reserves by $203 million — leaving $845 million in our ending fund balance?

It's not too late to follow the example of the "other Washington" for real leadership.