United Faculty of Washington State

So the budget that nobody read but all the Senate Republicans and three nominal Democrats voted for as the clock struck midnight turned out to be a bit of an embarrassment.  It seems that the “fund education first” crowd had written a budget that cut education by another 80 mil or so, which quickly became a little awkward for the Zarellistas, the Road Kill renegades, and the putative Republican gubernatorial nominee.    

But not to worry.  Even as the education crowd was flooding Olympia with outraged emails and phone calls, the Zarellistas sharpened up their pencils and presto, not four days into the special session a new budget appeared, this time without those unsightly education cuts. 

That education cuts can come and go with relative ease in the Zarelli budget should come as no surprise, since what gets funded and what doesn’t is not really what this budget proposal is really about. To find the long-term ideological bedrock of the Zarelli budget we need to turn to the trinity of a blown-off pension payment, charter schools, and a state takeover of K-12 employee health care.  These things are all part of the latest R-plus-3D budget even though the first one is exactly the sort of “gimmick” about which Republicans have repeatedly berated Democrats, the second one doesn’t save a dime and would certainly end up draining public education even further, and the third one would actually cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. 

But never mind all that fiscal responsibility stuff, what the three pillars of the Zarelli budget have in common is that they all further eviscerate the public sphere and take specific aim at the state’s biggest public sector union, the Washington Education Association.  You have to give Washington’s Republican/Road Kill politicians credit for their ability to learn from the experiences of their colleagues in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.  Instead of overreaching to do away with public infrastructure and collective bargaining all at once and risking massive 99% backlash, our guys are coming at us piecemeal.  Makes them look reasonable by comparison. 

Before the ink was dry on the newest budget proposal, Governor Gregoire told the Zarellistas to “get over it” and promised to veto charter schools.  And the skipped pension payment is locked in a staring match with the Democrats’ apportionment payment delay.   

That leaves the health care takeover.  If we take the State Auditor and the State Health Care Authority at their word, Senate Bill 6442 (the bill included in the Zarelli budget that mandates the state takeover of K-12 employee health care) would do at least four things: create a new state bureaucracy, cost the state tens of millions of dollars, reduce health care for over a hundred thousand underpaid teachers and school workers while denying health care altogether to thousands of others, and, most importantly to the Republicans/Road Kills, take away collective bargaining rights.  The Zarellistas claim that 6442 will eventually save money, which could be true, but only because the added bureaucracy will be paid for and more by reduced health care for all and no health care for many.

History will no doubt judge us very harshly when it comes to health care.  Future generations will probably look back on our current health arrangements the way that we look back on slavery.  Here at the blog, we haven’t been to church in a while, but we still know that it is surely a sin that the richest country in history allows some people to go without medical care and other people to profit from pain.  The future will surely see us as barbaric for not understanding health care as a basic human right rather than a “benefit” to be reduced and exchanged for a budget deal.

But until that future comes, we should not take away the ability of school employees to have at least some say in their access to medical care.  Whatever else it will or won’t do, taking away the right to collectively bargain health care will mean that our teachers and other school employees will pay more and get less.  A lot of the real Democrats are going to get a lot of pressure to vote for the health care takeover, especially if charter schools and the pension gimmick go away.  The health care takeover will start to look like a compromise rather than the fundamental retreat that it is.

As they consider that vote, we hope they’ll keep at least one eye on the long-term consequences. 

If they come in the morning for some collective bargaining rights, they’ll be coming tonight for all of them.

You know it’s a party when the Lieutenant Governor has to admonish State Senator Derek Kilmer—not once, but twice—to settle down.

The rakish, usually quite affable, and always polite Senator Kilmer was clearly pissed last Friday as he raised his voice against the “backroom deal” that had brought a Republican budget to the floor.  It seems that Senate rules are arcane enough that a budget that no one but the writers has seen and about which there has been no public testimony can be introduced on a Friday afternoon and passed just after midnight on Saturday morning.  And Senate decorum is apparently such that saying “backroom deal” is akin to talking about somebody’s mama.

Fortunately, here at the blog we’re unconstrained by such niceties, so we can call Friday night what it was: mean.

• $311 million more cut from food and housing assistance, as well as services for children in poverty

• $67 million more cut from toxic cleanup of our lakes and rivers

• $44 million more cut from K-12 classrooms

• $41 million more cut from Disability Lifeline services for disabled adults

• $38 million more cut from college and university students

It would, of course, be a little unfair to blame the good senators who voted for this budget, since most of them hadn’t had time to read it by the time the question was called.

The real star of Friday night’s performance was Senator Joe Zarelli, the architect and mastermind of the budget coup.  Unlike that loose cannon Senator Kilmer, Zarelli remained mindful of the bright Senate line that separates gentility from anarchy and was careful not to say what he was really thinking, which was probably something like “The good senator from the sixth can go suck an egg, because I have the votes and she doesn’t.”  Instead, he tried his best to keep the smug looks off his face as he rose to do his best Fred McMurray imitation, genially telling the angry Democrats that as soon as they calmed down he was sure everything would be O.K.  If TVW had switched to black and white while Senator Zarelli was talking it would have been just like an episode of My Three Sons.

Playing the parts of Robbie, Chip, and Ernie were nominally Democratic Senators Tim Sheldon, Jim Kastama, and Rodney Tom.  They didn’t say much, but their votes were crucial to the coup and what allowed the Republicans to crow about the “bi-partisan” vote for the budget no one had read.

Senator Tom was particularly quiet Friday night.  His support for the Zarelli budget is particularly disheartening for those of us in higher education.  We’ve always hoped that Senator Tom, as chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, would somehow see his way clear to genuinely supporting our state’s outstanding universities and colleges.  In the budget that Senate Democrats presented last week (the budget that people actually got to read and testify about), Senators Ed Murray, Lisa Brown and Derek Kilmer showed a lot of leadership and courage in finally proposing no more cuts to education.  As Senator Tom sat down with his Republican pals to write the coup budget, we would have hoped that he would have insisted, as the chair of Higher Education, that another $38 million not be cut from an already decimated system.  As the 25^th and deciding vote, you’d think he could’ve gotten at least that in the deal.

Hope he got something else really good instead.