Governor Gregoire
If the state placed a tax on people willing to tell the Governor how her ideas won’t work (Ex. A, B, C), I feel sure that Washington state’s deficit crisis would be in full retreat. I have been critical of Governor Gregoire’s stay-the-course attitude as she’s kept hacking away at the state budget, so her out-of-the-box thinking regarding ferry system “ownership” and consolidation of our educational agencies (previously modeled on a slime mold aggregation) is a welcome attempt to deal with the new economic reality.
I am slightly alarmed to find myself in the company of Crosscut’s David Brewster on this. But where Brewster applauds Gregoire for her seizure of the helm, I’m more interested in whether or not Gregoire’s shift inspires legislative leadership to break out of reflexive, ideological positions themselves, and start to contribute something more than stale talking points and wishful fantasies. (I’ve started thinking of Republicans as the Donner Party, rather than the GOP, since they seem to have developed a taste of budget cuts that come out of people’s hides; but neither have Democrats distinguished themselves.)
It is no mean trick, in the middle of an economic crisis, to keep an open mind that can consider farther-afield, untested options. You run the risk, as Gregoire has, of having everyone line up to tell you how insane you are for suggesting anything at all–or to ascribe Machiavellian motivations to you (to politicians, a lifeboat is primarily a vote-collection vehicle). But I can’t help but notice that the line of people suggesting workable alternatives is very, very short.
Gregoire calls for putting the ferry system under the control of Puget Sound Regional Ferry District, made up of “all or a portion of the following counties: Clallam, Jefferson, Kitsap, Island, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish, King and Pierce counties.” The state would, crucially, continue to provide a subsidy, but the counties would have taxing authority as well.
Gregoire’s point is that the state, hamstrung by Eyman initiatives, can no longer fund the ferry system responsibly–you can argue that they are a part of the state’s transportation system, but from a funding standpoint, that argument is moot. The drawback is that if anyone has less money than the state, it’s counties, so the victory of taxing authority is Pyrrhic. On the other hand, it’s hard to begrudge the counties that rely most on ferry transportation the chance to run them. It makes strategic sense, so long as the state subsidy fairly represent the ferries’ importance to the state’s transportation system.
When you’re improvising, as Gregoire is, it helps for everyone else in the room to remember the golden rule of improvisation: “Your response can be anything but no.” If you are not happy with Gregoire’s idea, develop it; don’t discount it. No matter what its flaws, the only thing worse would seem to be the current situation. Under WSDOT, the state ferry system’s automated ticket kiosks–in the years since their introduction–don’t function reliably at the Seattle terminal.
The bureaucratic ossification of the state’s educational agencies, which struggle to remain on the same page, or demonstrate their relevance, is another good fight. Not all education reform is good reform–some might say reform has become education’s drug of choice–but accountability and effectiveness are woefully absent in our current set-up. From an earlier post:
From the Research, Evaluation, and Assessment page of the Seattle School District site, I learn the Seattle school district has a Director of Research, Evaluation & Assessment; a Gates Data Fellow; a Senior Data Analyst; a Program Evaluator/Data Steward; a Assessment Systems Analyst, a Student Information Systems Analyst; and a Lead Education Systems Analyst.
None of these people, I’m told, can tell me how many students are in classrooms, and whether class size has grown over the past ten years.
If this is business as usual, then it’s no wonder the state is running in the red. And anyone with the state’s best interests at heart will find a way to welcome not just the “hard choices” the recession has thrust upon us, but the opportunities to break free from habits of governance.
Seeing how millions were wasted on bloated salaries, overtime, and make work in both institutions, this is just more of the clueless Governor sidestepping responsibility again and rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Seeing how the people didn’t raise their taxes in the last election she is going to try to shift any tax increases to the counties that have ferry terminals. Seeing how King 5 tv exposed Waste on the Water, maybe they should do the same on our education system.
She’s rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic because Washington’s budget is fucked…by the economy and unrealistic limitations on the government’s ability to fund itself, not because of mysterious, never-to-be-pinpointed by anyone huge amounts of waste which, if only we got rid of them, we’d be able to have our cake and eat it, too. While the waste in the ferry system was particularly egregious, it almost proves the point that such huge amounts of waste cannot escape detection forever. If you really think there’s billions of dollars disappearing down a blackhole of unfair overtime payments that would make up the very real deficits in these fields, well, I have some magic beans I’d love to discuss selling to you.
Many, many moons ago, back when Governor Gregoire was AG, I worked in the Seattle AG’s office. Due to restrictions written into the budget process, we were not allowed to order pens or mechanical pencils for our day to day work, because they were “too expensive.” So, we had to order regular #2 pencils. Due to another little cost-saving item, there was only one pencil sharpener for the entire floor. The result was that we were forced to order pre-sharpened #2 pencils by the truckload, and then throw them away as soon as the lead wore down.
I brought in my own little, manual sharpener, thinking I was being clever, then got (metaphorically) spanked because using my own supplies could, possibly, in some weird version of the universe, give me cause to sue the state for compensation or something.
Coincidentally, I had previously worked as a page in the state House during a budget session, and had the opportunity to see the process in action. It was an interesting lesson in cause and effect. Working in public service is much, much weirder than most people realize.