Warnick: GOP calls for special session to deal with budget

MOSES LAKE — House and Senate Republicans are asking Gov. Jay Inslee to convene a special session of the state legislature to deal with the state’s looming revenue crisis, according to Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake.

Speaking to the Columbia Basin Herald on Friday, Warnick said the legislature needs to address any possible revenue shortfalls in a special session “by the end of June” before the start of the next fiscal year on July 1.

“We do have some budget challenges,” Warnick said. “The governor has issued a mandate for a 15 percent cut from all state agencies, and that’s going to be very difficult, especially for natural resource agencies.”

According to a May 15 report by the state’s Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, which creates the revenue forecasts used to craft state budgets, tax revenues for April were down 22.5 percent, or $434.6 million lower than projected.

Lower sales and tobacco tax payments were responsible for about half the shortfall, while the Department of Revenue deferred from April until late June around $200 million in business and occupation taxes.

In 2019, the state legislature approved a state operating budget for the 2019-21 biennium of slightly more than $50 billion. In a memo to state agencies on May 13, the Office of Financial Management (OFM) asked them to “identify operating budget savings options” of 15 percent in $12.5 billion appropriated for the fiscal year beginning on July 1.

Some local governments, like the Moses Lake School District, are also looking at 15 percent across-the-board budget cuts as well.

“I applaud the school district for taking that lead,” Warnick said.

The same OFM memo said the state is facing a potential $7 billion revenue shortfall over the next three years because of the economic collapse caused by closures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The only power that the governor has to control spending in a crisis is “straight, across-the-board cuts,” Warnick said, while the legislature “can be strategic” and better target cuts in spending.

Warnick, however, said she is concerned that across-the-board cuts will affect the most vulnerable in the state — the elderly, children in foster care, and those in need of mental health care — as well as “natural resource agencies” like Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Natural Resources and even the Department of Ecology.

“In certain areas, austerity is unacceptable,” Warnick said, echoing a statement made Thursday by State Schools Superintendent Chris Reykdal.

But she also said she wasn’t sure right now where cuts could be made, though she suggested that the 3 percent salary increase for public employees scheduled for July 1 may need to be put on hold.

“I agree with a lot of folks who are suffering with a lack of jobs,” Warnick said. “Now is not the time to increase salaries.”

The work of finding places to cut the budget would need to be done by state legislators in session, Warnick said. Currently, she said all members of the House and Senate GOP caucus support a special session, along with “a Democrat or two.”

However, if Inslee refuses to call a special session to deal with the potential budget problems, Warnick said the legislature itself likely does not have the support of two-thirds of its own members needed to call itself back into session.

“There are not enough Democrats,” she said. “I’m not sure it will happen.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].