Two ways to make deep cuts in government services
Our local politicians are coping with austerity by sharing the pain and keeping nearly all programs alive for a future return. But what about the chance to be rid of programs that don't work?
Rather daringly, The Seattle Times' editorial page has not only jumped on board the bandwagon for deep cuts in the state budget, prompted by shrinking tax receipts; it is also naming names of programs to be cut back. Its list totals $4 billion in cuts over the next two years.
It's a brutal list, mostly temporary pay cuts to state employees and teachers. For instance, it would roll back the Initiative 728 money, passed to reduce classroom size and costing nearly $500 million a year; such a suspension of the initiative took place in 2003. Savings of almost as much would come from not granting pay and benefit increases for state workers, schools, and colleges. Skip payments to the state pension fund; extend the state hiring freeze; skip contributions to the Life Sciences Discovery Fund — it begins to add up.
The philosophy in this recommendation, as with recently announced cuts in King County and Seattle budgets, is to share the pain and defer obligations, but to spare the programs. Forgo pay increases, pay for things (like pensions) later, shift full time workers to four-day workers, stop expanding programs — but don't eliminate any. Then, when the good times roll again, you can resume spending and reward the state workers who sacrificed during the downturn.
There is another way, one that requires much more political courage: eliminate (or merge) some programs that don't work well. Instead of sharing all the misery and demoralizing nearly everyone, sunset some whole programs and departments that are not working well. But this approach, which the private sector is more likely to follow, risks having all the other programs rally around the intended victim, lest they also get on the list. Ask any university that has tried to eliminate just one weak department — and confronted near-revolutionary resistance. The only way to do it is with some political cover, usually a blue-ribbon panel to recommend the cuts along some rational set of priorities; and that takes time to put together. The other way is to have a political leader of Giuliani-level confidence and arrogance, with a lot of reformers behind the mayor or governor.
Examples? Some that come to mind (not necessarily good ideas, but good illustrations) are: combine some departments such as Seattle Center and the Parks Department; eliminate the Department of Neighborhoods; close redundant fire stations; dramatically scale back the office of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction; close the UW Bothell campus; sell off surplus land; privatize some services such as recreation centers; get King County out of the passenger ferry business; close small schools.
Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been saying that when a crisis gets big enough, there is a rare opportunity for bipartisan, long-term fixes. Quite true, and we certainly have a crisis of sufficient size. So far, however, nobody locally seems to be sensing this opportunity. (It was one of the biggest missed opportunities of the Dino Rossi campaign, which got cold feet about specific cuts.) Given the hold that state and local employees have over the officeholders, I'd be amazed if we actually do much seizing (as opposed to deferring).
Want to help? Comment below on programs that you would eliminate or dramatically change. (Including this writer, of course!)
Like what you just read? Support high quality local journalism by becoming a member of Crosscut.com today!
Comments:
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 8:02 a.m. inappropriate
I can assure you that *most* state workers are *NOT* overpaid. Not even close. There are a good number of staff at the University of Washington (where I work) who qualify for public assistance on their current salaries.
They are the people who fix the infrastructure, prepare the food, organize the information, and make sure the university's doors are open every day.
Even the tiny proposed pay raise (which does not begin to match increased living costs) is crucial for these folks, who often struggle to raise families and keep their heads above water financially. For them, 'sacrificing' by giving up a pay increase may mean the difference between riding out the current crisis and losing their homes.
There is however a *very large* glut of superfluous middle managers and administrators who receive insanely high salaries. Elimination or consolidation of many of these "dead wood" positions could create greatly increased efficiencies and would most certainly not be missed.
It is disturbing and misleading to constantly see "state workers" portrayed as some monolithic privileged class.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 8:09 a.m. inappropriate
Puget Sound Partnership, save 500 Million and put the money into actual clean-up jobs like WWTP infrastructure upgrades and Stormwater Improvements. Eliminate all ethnically based outreach programs. Eliminate services for non-citizens. Open bidding on Public projects to all qualified contractors, not just union shops. Remove prevailing wage requirements (Standard union wage levels are enough). Remove apprentice and Minority contractor requirements for public jobs. Streamline EIS and SEPA for expansion of existing infrastructure. Enforce I-900 audit cost savings or provide the public with written ratioanl why it wasn't done.
Get out of the Booze business and allow sales on Sundays. Allow electronic casino style gaming on a limited basis for non-tribal operators and tax it.
Zero based budgeting review on every State program using a POG filter. NO State Lobbyists to be included. Eliminate all State paid lobbyists who lobby internally to other State agencies. What is the value added to the taxpayers of State employee unions? Offer all State employees the option to not be in a union to work for the State.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 8:21 a.m. inappropriate
Get rid of all the special-interest group offices (many duplicated by the city, county, AND state), like the Offices for Senior Citizens and the various minority affairs groups.
End the practice of giving out taxpayer dollars to sponsor non-profit conferences and the purchase of tables at events and galas (Sound Transit, for example, "buys" dozens of tables to support various community groups -- with your tax dollars; and the state's CTED gives away hundreds of thousands in similar "support" to community and trade associations).
Mr. Brewster is on the right track when calling for the privatization of some services. Many non-profits are far more efficient than the government; many non-profits, including most social service agencies, are nearly branches of the government because they receive so many taxpayer-funded grants. But even for-profit organizations are capable of delivering effective human services, and can certainly operate community centers with better customer service than what we are getting.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 11:55 a.m. inappropriate
I remember seeing on either the Times' or P-I's site a couple of years ago an interactive feature on which you could check and uncheck certain programs to see just how hard it was to balance the state's budget. Once you were satisfied with your cuts I think you might even have been able to save or print out your suggestions and, I presume, send them to the paper and/or the governor's office. Would be useful to have something like that this time around. All the Times offers on the page linked to is a somewhat useless poll.
Privatization is fine in some cases. Merging of programs is great if it actually results is cost savings. Selling off surplus land? I'd be wary — it depends on the nature of the land.
I certainly do not envy the governor's position right now.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 12:13 p.m. inappropriate
Merge Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities creating one department that manages and delivers electric, water, sewer, and solid waste services. Energy and water are increasingly seen as interdependent resources given concerns about global warming and its impact on snowpack and stream run-off that supplies most of the city's electricity and potable water. See the current special issue of Scientific American magazine for more on the connections. Specific nexus #1: hot water conservation mesasures reduce both water and electric costs. Specific nexus #2: waste recycling requires a high energy input that needs to be calculated and minimized (visualize separate trucks carrying away different kinds of waste to different energy-intensive processing systems). Direct monetary benefits: fewer high-paid managers and clerks, reduced office overhead, and one consumer bill for all utility services, rather than the current separate billing.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 2:04 p.m. inappropriate
There is a natural tension between the interests of consolidation and efficiencies in government and the concept of local control. We can trace this to the U.S. Constitution which enumerates the powers of the Federal government with the rest belonging to the states.
Arguably,the state could be divided up into say 8 geographic administrative areas and county, city, and smaller sub-units of government and attendant bureaucracy could be dispatched. Of course there would still be bureaucracy, just fewer locally controlled jurisdictions.
School districts could - in a similar fashion - be consolidated into an umbrella bureaucracy such as OSPI or Educational Service Districts.
The question is - who will you trust to make sure that a 911 dispatch arrives in under 5 min. to your home or place of business - the local fire department for your city or the state's hypothetical administrative area fire services protection services?
So, when you start throwing the bathwater out with the baby, just remember that local services will evolve into new forms where, as they say in the corporate world, redundancies are eliminated.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 2:40 p.m. inappropriate
I agree with Cameron that eliminating or selling off the Liquor Control Board would be a great thing to do. I'm just not sure what immediate savings would be available.
As an extreme measure, might allowing UW to go private be a good thing? a feasible thing? I really don't know, but it would allow for vast increases in tuition.
As for the City the recent proposal to eliminate the Office of Economic Development is a good one. There are other departments which are redundant or wholly useless. Office of Sustainability and Environment was also a offered as a cut. The work should remain, as should most of the people, but a separate department seems unnecessary and administratively expensive. I also like David's DON cut proposal. There seems little need to staff neighborhood offices, but I admit I don't understand who uses those services, so perhaps it does have value.
Revenue wise the City is in good shape, but the County and State are suffering badly. Initiative - 747 should never have been reapproved by the Legislature and Governor. I'm glad that those in Olympia are paying the price for that political expediency, sadly the burden is ultimately on us.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 3:34 p.m. inappropriate
I don't think the UW would be able to maintain its size if tuition skyrocketed. Not without a massive increase in its endowment, which is unlikely to happen at present.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 3:37 p.m. inappropriate
Here's a comment from Dennis Heck:
"The Times editorial recommendation to cut the I-728 funds for classroom size reduction (so called but with enough loopholes to dive a truck through) is NOT a suspension of that effort but rather a rollback of it. One can debate the merits of this but it is still a $900 million REDUCTION in K-12 funding. There are no easy ways out of this hole. It is comparable to the 1981-83 hole. If they take it all in cuts, it will take a decade to get back. That's how deep they will be."
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 4 p.m. inappropriate
According to its website, Department of Social and Health Services consumes 30% of the State budget (this does not include the federal contribution to DSHS). DSHS has grown like Medicare. There is no limit to its theoretical growth. Cutting education and leaving DSHS to its relentless growth is a terrible plan for the future.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 4:11 p.m. inappropriate
As much an opportunity crises provide for long-term expenditure fixes, they also provide opportunities for long-termn revenue fixes. I'm not suggesting wholesale tax increases or changes (although I'd ideally like to move away from regressive sales taxes), but more changing the way we pay for certain services. Services that can be provided for by the direct users of those services should be provided as such.
Namely, an increase in gas taxes to more accurately price pollution and congestion. Also tolling at least on the bridges and increases in the fares for the Ferry system. Unfortunately most of the services that are amenable to this structure aren't really included in the budget anyway. Transportation projects aren't part of the General Fund operating budget.
The State is overly burdened with mandates on school funding and then saddled with costs that are event driven, i.e. unemployment benefits, medicaid payouts and other social services. K-12, Higher Ed and Social services make up 82% of the budget. It's impossible to pay for those solely with direct charges and it's hard to provide for those with a consumption based tax system. Tough decisions need to be made, but I don't think the leadership is really there to make them.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 4:18 p.m. inappropriate
The tone of the Times piece is rather off-putting, particularly since it comes from a business that in all probablility is insolvent in part because of its own management incompetence and demonstrated venality in dealing with the PI and others.
The Times feels that it is OK to suspend voter approved initiatives that increased spending but not those that reduced taxes, those are sacrosanct. As the Times likes to say, their opinion piece is cause for concern.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 4:41 p.m. inappropriate
I guess that is why Democratic Governor Locke suspended that Initiative the first time around. Different Democratic Governor, same action.
I like the skipping funding the Pension Plan for State employees too. That system is already 5 Billion in the hole and will not be back to 100% funded until 2024, why not just push it out to 2050?
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 6:37 p.m. inappropriate
I agree with the PI's editorial take that education, both K-12 and higher ed, are taking a bigger hit than any other area (at 20% I believe)in the budget.
I-728 was passed to lower class sizes but then used for other things by school districts. However, it will be money lost no matter what to hard strapped districts.
Per the State Auditor's recent report, Seattle Schools will be announcing tomorrow up to 9 schools that may close by the end of this school year. (In their own clumsy and cold way, they have chosen dates right before Thanksgiving and Christmas and well as right after the students get back from the Winter holiday, to make preliminary and final announcements.) So Seattle Public Schools is trying.
Are they trying hard enough? Well, consider that the State Auditor also said that (1) SPS have too many staff at their headquarters in proportion to other districts (to which the district says they are a large and complex district - true but doesn't really answer the question) and (2) SPS has not been keeping up with basic maintenance (also true - OSPI recommends 4% of a district's General Fund for maintenance; SPS used to do 2% and in the last 10 years has been spending 1%). The district and the Board remain strangely silent on these issues.
SPS gave its superintendent, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson, a raise (a COLA plus a raise) after less than a year of employment. From Denise Gonzalez-Walker's reader blog at the PI:
"When Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno came on board in April 2006, her salary was $142,653, according to a Seattle Times article. A little over a year later, the Times lists her salary as $150,821--over a 5% increase. More recently, OSPI data accessed via the Seattle Times searchable database shows Santorno's 2007-08 salary at $183,408--over a 20% increase since being hired on in 2006."
Nice work if you can get it. Oh and they found money in the BEX capital building fund to hire not one but two new staff for Facilities at a cost of $160,000 per year.
So when Seattle Public Schools cries poor, you have to wonder. Why didn't they do basic maintenance so that they are not drowning in backlogged maintenance? Why did the School Board feel the need to give Dr. Goodloe-Johnson a raise so soon (ditto Carla Santorno)? Why isn't there a hiring freeze across the board at the district headquarters or better yet, staff cuts?
And just as an aside, it seems odd that none of the journalism outlets - newspapers, radio or tv - have said very much about the upcoming closures. No backstory, no investigating what else the State Auditor said about the district, just a couple of bloggers (me at saveseattleschools.blogspot.com, Denise at the PI and the excellent West Seattle blog) doing the work to unravel the mess at Seattle Public Schools.
It works out well for the district to have people worried by the horrible economy plus the distraction of the holidays so that there isn't a lot of questioning of their motives, their actions or lack thereof.
Melissa Westbrook
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 7:11 p.m. inappropriate
While I appreciate that there may be a few lackluster programs in our state government, I just can't go along with the idea that this is the appropriate approach to an economic crisis. It's like selling off walls of your house down because you can't pay the heating bill.
Economic times are hard but it is wrongheaded to be cutting services right when people actually need them. What's the use of providing services only when times are good?
If you're looking for opportunities to balance the budget, now is the time to look at the other side of the equation: income. Just as any family looks to find better pay when bad times hit, the state should also be looking for ways to gain stable, reliable income, preferably by finally adopting a progressive income tax. And for those who think this is the time to sell off assets, think again--you don't sell low, you sell high. The one-time gain would be akin to selling off the family car at a garage sale.
Posted Mon, Nov 24, 8:47 p.m. inappropriate
what makes you think that the items suggested for cutting are "assets" ?
perhaps they are failed, bloated, self serving, inefficient dinosaurs ?
maybe its time for some of them to go extinct ?
maybe its because the democrats have failed to manage the state economy ?
maybe its because the current governor has no management abilities ?
maybe you should be in a position to hear what insiders had to say about Christines abilities when she was AG !
Posted Mon, Dec 1, 8 a.m. inappropriate
It's time for our leaders to lead! They won't like making these hard choices but it needs to be done. If making these decisions make them uncofortable then don't run for office.