State budget: Some savings, some hooey

Between now and the fall elections, you'll hear a lot about state budget deficits and surpluses, spending and overspending. The just-passed supplemental budget reflects more restraint than might be expected of a Democratic-controlled Legislature, especially after many lean years. But the budget produces an unnecessary deficit in two years.

For that reason, praise for lawmakers for socking away $941 million for next time is sincere, but more should have been saved. The governor could line-item veto some spending and probably will, on the margins. It's not just spending. Lawmakers doled out tax breaks worth $50 million. It wasn't any specific tax break that is so nettlesome, it was the ad hoc, random nature of their awarding.

Lawmakers are legitimately fearful of putting $1 billion into savings because it acts as a trigger number that prompts things such as Initiative 695, the 1999 car-tab-reduction plan. During an initiative campaign, lawmakers have a tough time explaining that they can't return money in the form of tax breaks because the next legislative cycle includes a projected deficit.

Critics say lawmakers increased spending this biennium by 17 percent, but that is hooey. The figures ignore millions put into various savings accounts. The actual spending increase is closer to 13 to 14 percent — still too much.

On state pensions, the Legislature did not behave as responsibly as it could have. It did begin paying into public employee pension reserves for the first time in four years, which was good, but it voted to ramp up payments over three years and not make up for payments missed. The excuse for this was that local governments would have had to do the same, and smaller counties would have been in a bind. So they would — but the result will be much bigger bills for all public agencies a year from now.

Legislators dodged another pension issue, called gain sharing. This is a promise made during the dot-com boom that when the pot of money in the employee pension funds spills over from a booming stock market, retirement benefits will be permanently raised. This was sold as being almost free, but the state actuary says it isn't, and has to be funded in advance like any other increase in pensions. State pensions are generous enough as they are. The Legislature should have terminated gain sharing, and it didn't.

Lawmakers were right to slash $5 daily parking fees at state parks, a hard-times budget necessity that now should be eliminated. Most money was restored to parks from the general fund.

This year, the supplemental budget was the route to relative riches for public education.

Education advocates long complained of the state's paltry pay for teachers. Lobbying from the powerful teachers union garnered educators a 3.3-percent raise. That money is in addition to locally negotiated pay raises such as those embedded in the Seattle Public Schools' five-year teachers contract.

The Legislature's budget fully funds levy-equalization money, the dollars sent to poorer school districts to make up for their inability to raise as much money as larger, more-well-off districts. A small but critical agreement by lawmakers is a slight increase in employee health-care funding to offset higher costs for education employees.

In the coming weeks, students will take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and lawmakers this session were acutely aware of the high stakes. The budget includes $28.5 million for remedial programs to help students pass the WASL.

The Class of 2008 becomes guinea pigs for the new test and should be given plenty of support to succeed. The budget also increases slots at colleges and universities, which in a state that needs greater access is hard to argue with.

Rosier economic times produced $107 million in new revenues that made budgeting easier this year. It was a good outing but should have been more penurious.