Legislators at Wednesday’s League of Women Voters forum agreed
that the state’s budget situation looks dire, but they managed to
find a few rays of hope in a bleak picture.
“We wouldn’t do this if we weren’t optimists by nature,” said Rep.
Christine Rolfes, D-23rd District, told a packed audience of about
70 people.
On the bright side for transportation, she said the state is on
track for building three new ferry boats. And even though they are
small ferries, they will relieve the overall shortage of boats once
they come into the system. She said they also provide jobs for boat
builders and economic stimulus for local communities once they are
put into service.
Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-26th District, said that during the current
recession more people than ever are looking for worker retraining
programs at community colleges. Olympic College has a waiting list
of 1,000 people in need of such training, he said.
Even with budget constraints the Legislature did manage to put $20
million more into worker retraining last year, and Kilmer would
like to see that amount increased by taking a small percentage of
worker compensation funds paid by employers and putting it into
retraining.
Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-23rd District, said serving on the Health
and Human Services Committee in the House is the most difficult
assignment she has had in the Legislatures.
“People are talking about cutting out the Basic Health plan,” she
said. “It already has a waiting list with more people on it than
are in the plan. This means we have 70,000 people with no health
insurance.”
She said these are the people who end up in the emergency room. And
the costs, she said, are passed on to the rest of us whether we
realize it or not.
Catherine Ahl, president of LWV Kitsap and moderator of the forum,
asked whether cutting one major program, such as the Puget Sound
Partnership, would be worth doing to save other programs.
Rolfes said that even if all spending on natural resources were
eliminated it would only save half a billion dollars when the
Legislature is faced with trimming $2 billion from the budget
during the session beginning in January.
Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-26th District, said it’s a false dichotomy
to think that cutting out spending on the environment will somehow
help the economy. It’s just the opposite, he said.
“The route out of the bottom on this recession is through green
jobs and better stewardship,” he said.
The others agreed that spending on cleaning up Puget Sound and
other environmental initiatives will help pull us out of the
recession.
The lawmakers had a hard time trying to come up with new areas for
cutting.
Rep. Kathy Haigh, D-35th District, said the Legislature cut out
teachers’ cost-of-living increases last session and did not fund
I-728, which normally provides money for class size reduction and
enrichment programs.
All of the state’s universities saw severe budget cuts, with the
result that tuition is rising.
“As we talk about no new taxes,” she said, eyeing signs around the
room brought by anti-tax advocates, “we need to realize we are
putting the burden on our kids. They are coming out of school with
huge debts.”
Despite the problems facing the state, Ahl said she was encouraged
by the turnout at the meeting and hoped to see many of the same
faces in Olympia next year when she and other League members go to
lobby the legislators.
