Bad Budget News from WA State

[mondo joe]

The Governor's budget was released today.

Reductions include cutting $500 million from state programs that provide health care for children, the poor and the disabled. The cuts could eliminate health-care services for 46,000 people.

Cuts include a 33 percent reduction in levy equalization payments to public schools. This money helps support about 200 school districts that have small property-tax bases to rely on. It would save the state $125 million.

The governor would eliminate proposed pay increases for state workers and teachers. The state employee pay raises were negotiated between the governor and state worker unions, but haven't yet been approved by the Legislature. Initiative 732, approved by voters in 2000, requires annual salary increases for teachers to be pegged to inflation. However, the Legislature can suspend the initiative with a simple majority vote.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008535296_webbudget19m.html

I know none of these cuts are what Governor Gregoire wants.

Some ass implied our state budget problems are the result of spending too much. Governor Gregoire nicely put him in his place by pointing out that there is a national financial crisis.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. While $64 billion in potential revenue go uncollected EACH YEAR

The state Department of Revenue issued a report a few years ago (I think it was 2003) which detailed the approximately $64 BILLION (yes, with a B) in potential revenue go uncollected every year.

About have of that money is potential property taxes that our state constitution declares exempt from property taxes: schools, fire houses, things like that.

The remaining $32 BILLION comes in the form of tax exemptions given to corporations, many of which have been around since the Depression and initiatives to keep businesses in business. For example, the state has not levied a sales tax on newspapers since 1931. Changing that and collecting just 2 cents per paper could bring almost a million dollars a year all by itself.

The state constitution prohibits passage of laws which benefit single groups or legal entities, but the Legislature has been getting around that for decades. Microsoft and Adobe System, both based in Washington, are exempt from millions of dollars in various taxes and fees every year. State law cannot name them specifically, so the laws granting these exemptions grant them to very large software companies that employ at least x hundreds of people; only Microsoft and Adobe qualify. Likewise a controversial law that created a $4 BILLION tax break for any vast aerospace company in the state. Oddly enough, Boeing is the only company in the United States that meets the legal qualifications.

It is criminal that the state would rather give tax breaks to large corporations and shut down vital social services, rather than make everyone pay what they should. But then, this is American, and Washington State in particular.