Sine Die 2009

2009 Session Overview

Upon arriving in Olympia in January, lawmakers faced a budget crisis best described as simply unprecedented.

And then it got worse.

Washington’s economy, bucking national trends in recent years due in part to a drawn-out housing boom, finally succumbed to worldwide economic pressures in 2008. The housing market froze. Unemployment, home foreclosures and requests for public assistance began to climb in long, clumsy steps. Consumer spending pulled back. And in a state that relies so heavily on the sales tax to provide a little over half its operating budget, tax collections began to dry up.

More than $5 billion in anticipated revenue would disappear within a year. And by the time Gov. Chris Gregoire produced a budget proposal in December the state’s once-modest budget shortfall had swelled to $6 billion.

Economic news continued to worsen well into the new year. On one January day, Boeing and Starbucks announced the planned elimination of nearly 17,000 jobs. So when the state’s Revenue Forecast Council produced a new projection of tax collections in March, the shortfall was recalculated to a once unthinkable figure — a little more than $9 billion, or about a quarter of the state’s entire operating budget.

Though profound, the crisis hardly set Washington apart. Elsewhere in the country, 45 other states were reporting a collective budget shortfall of over $350 billion.

The Senate began attacking the problem early. On Feb. 13 the upper chamber approved a series of administrative cuts and other savings to pare the first $735 million off the shortfall. When it was sent to the governor’s desk five days later it was the earliest any Legislature had approved steep budget cuts in modern history.

In late March, the House and Senate introduced similar operating budget proposals soaked in red ink. Though they made use of roughly $3 billion in one-time federal stimulus dollars and $2 billion from fund shifts, use of reserves and public employee compensation reductions, the single largest component of the solution was roughly $4 billion in painful cuts to an array of valued programs.

The solution called for adding roughly 7,000 public employees to the ranks of the unemployed. It slashed spending for education and higher education, increased college tuition by extraordinary levels and decimated budgets for health care and human services programs.

But it also managed to maintain a safety net, albeit a smaller one, for the state’s most vulnerable populations.

And it was more than just a crisis management plan. The budget, written with an eye toward the future, was as much the foundation for a recovery plan and a remodeled state government. Programs thought to be most sustainable over time were identified and preserved, even as they, too endured cuts. A robust reserve was left in place to prevent even deeper cuts should the economy worsen further.

But while the budget crisis required lawmakers to set priorities and make difficult decisions, the final solution did not pick winners and losers. Rather, it shared the sacrifice. Senate budget writers followed a judicious process with a priority in preserving programs that prevent even larger downstream costs.

Democrats in the state Senate did not run for office to achieve these ends, to lay off teachers, close doors to the state’s colleges and universities, strip the working poor of their health insurance or slash general assistance payments to the unemployable.

But they were elected to make tough decisions, whatever they may be, whenever they may be required.

Constituents across the state expected their representatives to meet their responsbility to balance the state’s books, even during one of the toughest economic climates in a lifetime.

 

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