Despite budget woe, legislature not meeting

OLYMPIA — Facing a projected $8.8 billion budget shortfall in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Republican state lawmakers are urging their Democratic counterparts to call the legislature into a special session to balance the budget.

Republican lawmakers had hoped to return to Olympia in June, before the biennial budget kicked in on July 1, said Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, in a Wednesday interview.

“I think we could have made some adjustments to that budget; we could have looked at the rainy day fund and taken some of the funds from that, and made it not quite so painful as we go into this biennium,” Warnick said.

A special session can either be called by the governor or by a two-thirds majority vote in both the state House and Senate, but Democrats in the governor’s mansion and in the legislature have declined to do so, Warnick said.

“Our caucus asked several times, asked the governor to call us back, asked the other side of the aisle to call us back,” Warnick said. “But for whatever reason, they haven’t.”

According to many Republicans in the legislature, the reason for the delays is the upcoming November election, in which Gov. Jay Inslee and a number of state legislators are up for re-election. Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, pointed to recent comments by former Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, indicating that Democrats would look to make up the shortfall with new taxes.

“So they’re already basically saying we need more taxes to get out of this,” Ybarra said. “They have the votes for those taxes, and if they get those taxes, they’re going to look very bad in front of voters.”

Sen. Minority Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, agrees with this analysis.

“It’s absolutely don’t offend the public employee unions of any kind, and don’t scare businesses into taking an active stance against them until after the election,” Schoesler said. “This is all about the election, this is not about sound fiscal policy.”

Rebalancing the budget with any precision would require the legislature, Schoesler noted. While Inslee has some authority to cut spending in the budget, which he signed earlier this year, he can only make even cuts across the board, rather than looking at individual programs, Schoesler said.

“It’s amazing that you could walk away from the need to get our budgetary house in order, and if the governor is forced to do across the board cuts, we’re cutting hospitals and nursing homes that have been suffering with (the pandemic),” Schoesler said.

The governor has taken some other steps to decrease spending, including by placing many state employees on furlough, but Schoesler said that public employees making less than $89,000 a year are actually getting paid more under the current furlough scheme. The governor also vetoed about $240 million of around $1 billion in new spending approved by the legislature in the last session, but Schoesler stated that the cuts didn’t go far enough.

“Our caucus believes that the first thing you do is eliminate the increases in spending. Before you ever look at any reductions, you look at the increases,” Schoesler said. “Now, would it not be easier to take $500 million of that new spending and stop it?”

But those kinds of cuts won’t cover an $8.8 billion hole in the budget, and some programs, even well-liked ones, will need to be put on hold, said Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake.

“We’re going to have to make some tough decisions about what we can afford and what we can’t,” Dent said.

The longer that the legislature waits to make those decisions, the tougher they’ll become, Schoesler added.

“A dollar in savings in June is equal to a dollar and a half in January,” he said. “It only gets more difficult by waiting.”

And, Schoesler noted, avoiding a special session doesn’t just mean delaying balancing the budget — it also means that police reform proposals called for in recent months are also put on hold.

“Some of the civil rights issues would probably get strong bipartisan support,” Schoesler said. “If we want civil rights reform, why are we waiting until January?”