Published April 2005

Innovative solutions
needed to fill state’s
budget gap

By Don Brunell
Guest Editorial

Remember the commercial where the mechanic is leaning on the car fender with the hood up saying, “You can pay me now or pay me later”?

The owner had the choice. Either buy a new filter and change the oil every 5,000 miles or pay a whole lot more for a complete engine rebuild. In the Army, they call it preventative maintenance because troops need their tanks and trucks running in tip-top shape and not in the shop broken down.

Sometimes struggling families have a hard time finding the $30 for an oil change at the local gas station. But there are ways. For example, many parents teach their kids to change the oil and filter themselves at one-third the cost.

That’s the way it is in Olympia these days. We can either find ways to balance the budget by improvising, or we can kick the problem ahead to another time by doing “government as usual” and raising taxes and fees. Kicking the problem ahead a few years puts our economy at risk and almost guarantees it will be in the shop for a major rebuild. Meanwhile, the rest of the world ticks along winning the war for markets, plant investments and jobs.

As legislators and Gov. Gregoire look for ways to fill a $2.2 billion gap in the revenue, they need to realize our economy is fragile and just starting to recover. Simply, it is time we change the oil and filter ourselves.

Our leaders in Olympia need to challenge people in government to find innovative solutions that provide more services to our citizens with fewer people and a whole lot less bureaucracy.

It is no different than what the private sector is doing to survive in this fiercely competitive global marketplace. As distasteful as some may find today’s world economy, it is the reality in which we live.

It is time the Legislature and governor jettison the old “two-third, one-third formula” to solve our fiscal crisis. Whenever tax collections fall short, the approach is two-thirds program cuts and one-third more taxes and fees.

The formula is not a partisan thing. Republicans who controlled the Legislature and governor’s mansion in 1981 applied it, and Democrats controlling both branches did it in 1993. But it is a mold that must be broken.

The Legislature and Gov. Gregoire have a choice. They can patch together a two-year budget over the next couple of months with “sin tax” increases and program cuts, or they can look deeply into state government to eliminate programs that are obsolete, cut layers of the bureaucracy, and deliver more services to people needing them.

By empowering the state’s frontline workers to deliver faster and better services to the taxpayers, Washington can find ways to live within its means, keep our recovery going and move forward with voter confidence restored.

While the state of Washington cannot pick up and leave like a business can, the job-producing sector can and will relocate if the costs of doing business are lower across the border or overseas. They have no choice because they can’t pass higher taxes or government-imposed costs on to their customers because those customers also will migrate to suppliers with lower prices.

Streamlining any organization, whether it is a giant company or a large state, is not easy, but we either do it in an orderly way now or it will be done to us in a chaotic way later. Simply, letting our economy drift toward a major overhaul is worse than having the “car” in the shop for weeks while the mechanic finds all the parts for the rebuild. It is costly in time and money.

Don Brunell is president of the Association of Washington Business, Washington state’s chamber of commerce. Visit AWB on the Web at www.awb.org.

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