1. The state’s chief economist, Arun Raha, will announce his latest revenue forecast today—or more accurately, his lack of revenue forecast.
Fizz hears that Raha will subtract another $500 million to $1 billion from anticipated revenues—the state is currently facing a $4.6 billion shortfall for its 2011-2013 budget—pushing the already historic budget shortfall to at least $5.1 billion, if not $5.6 billion. That could amount to a nearly 20 percent bite out of the budget.
2. In yesterday’s Fizz, we gave “Analogy of the Day” honors to Seattle city council member Sally Clark for her testimony in Olympia in support of a transit bill. Addressing skeptical legislators, she persuasively compared the collective responsibility for funding education (nods all around) to the collective responsibility to pay for transit.
This morning, we’re giving out “Repartee of the Day” honors. The award goes to lefty lobbyist Nick Federici, who testified yesterday against a bill that would allow the state to override I-901, 2005′s voter-approved smoking ban, by licensing up to 600 cigar bars and tobacco shops.
Federici began his testimony by saying he “respected the will of the people”—referring to 901′s 63-36 victory.
Committee member, Republican Sen. Mark Schoesler (R-9, Ritzville), a cosponsor of the cigar bill, was quick to pounce: “Nick, do you share the ‘will of the people’ on all the initiatives, or just the ones you like? You come here and tell us ‘will of the people,’ but I bet you didn’t say that about 960 or 1053 [Tim Eyman's two-thirds rules for raising taxes, which Schoesler supported].”
Federici, definitely part of the liberal revenue coalition that pushed to overturn 960 last year so the legislature could raise taxes to fund social programs, didn’t skip a beat: “I think, like you Sen. Schoesler…”—at which point the whole room erupted into laughter, catching exactly where Federici was going—”I have a divided opinion on that.”
Federici’s point was a zinger: It takes a hypocrite to know one.
Federici then slyly acknowledged that he voted for 901 and “against many other initiatives,” telling Schoesler, who supported 960 and 1053: “You and I probably don’t see eye to eye on a lot of those.”
Schoesler could only manage: “You got that right.”
3. Besides the gotchas, the main point that opponents of the cigar bill—like Gary Johnson from Public Health Seattle King County—made was this: The $3.6 million anticipated in annual licensing fees for the state (licenses will be $15,000) will be dwarfed by the health care costs of tobacco related illnesses, already $1.95 billion a year.
That point dovetailed perfectly with the next bill on the docket—legislation that freshman Sen. Nick Harper (D-38, Everett) introduced last week to make fiscal notes not only define the immediate saving or expenditure on a bill, but also look at the associated long-term economics: How much will an investment now save in the future, or how much will a cut now cost in the future?
Remy Trupin, Executive Director of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, a liberal think tank, came with some specific answers to that question. Leading with the apparent non sequitur that “cuts to programs don’t always achieve savings,” he went on to explain that the state’s Basic Health Plan, subsidized care for the poor, costs $202 per month for one person, while the average cost of a hospital visit is $9,700—or four years worth of BHP costs for an individual. That kind of “uncompensated care,” more common when people aren’t getting basic care, gets passed along to the state, driving up premiums, Trupin said.
Trupin’s point put the legislature’s recent decision to drop 15,000 people from the BHP—supposedly saving $15 million—in a larger financial context.
WashPIRG lobbyist Steve Breaux, testifying alongside Trupin, summed up the point (and probably deserves today’s “Analogy of the Day” honors) saying: “We often ask the government to balance its checkbook the same way families balance their checkbooks”—which sounds like the traditional conservative script about cutting back spending during a recession.
But then he flipped it, “but most families recognize that putting off a trip to the dentist’s office or delaying repair to a leaky roof have long-term consequences that need to be accounted for rather than a short-term saving.”
4. And finally, in this apparent Best Of from yesterday’s parade of legislative hearings in Olympia—while we already filed a report yesterday afternoon about the testimony from Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes and Seattle city council member Tim Burgess on Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson’s (D-36, Ballard) bill to raise $440 million per biennium by legalizing and regulating pot, we left out a note—or more specifically, a question we had—about Rep. Dickerson.
“Let me get a little bit of water here,” Dickerson said right in the middle of her sprawling testimony about hemp in Jamestown up through what she seemed to think was a suspect voice vote of the U.S. Congress in 1937 to outlaw cannabis, “because my mouth is dry.”
She didn’t mention anything about having the munchies before committee chair Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48, Medina) urged her to wrap up, noting that her speech was running long.
