Goldy has the details.
With only hours left in the regular session, the Washington State House just rejected the Senate Republicans’ coup budget on a 56-43-ish vote (I neglected to write down the tally). Not that it’s news, but this sorta-officially guarantees a special session.
Also not news, Republicans are bunch of fucking liars. Listening to the TVW broadcast it was often hard to figure out whether the representative was a Republican or a Democrat, mostly because the Republicans kept accusing the Democrats of cutting funding for education, when in fact it’s the other way around, and kept attacking the Democratic budget for its “gimmicks,” when the R’s balance theirs by skipping a pension payment. But you know, I guess if they repeat it often enough, voters might believe it’s true.
I’m surprised the R’s didn’t decide to skip paying state workers, too.
That’s what they did the last time this state had a Republican governor, which is part of the reason why we haven’t had a Republican governor in 28 years. (The other reasons involve equally stupid Republican behavior.)
Our last Republican governor was John Spellman, who was elected in 1980. When the Reagan Depression hit in early 1981, the state faced a budget crisis because then (as now) our state’s over-reliance on sales taxes (so rich people don’t have to pay their fair share of state taxes) caused revenues to fall off a cliff when workers lost their jobs and quit spending.
Here’s what Spellman did. With only 24 hours notice, he delayed paychecks for 100,000 state workers for 6 weeks. The state had enough money to make payroll but Spellman figured the state could earn an extra $4 million of interest by keeping the money in the bank instead of distributing paychecks. Even back then $4 million wasn’t enough to make even a pinprick in the budget shortfall, so this appeared to be nothing more than cussedness by a worker-hating Republican politician.
Many state workers lived paycheck to paycheck (and still do) because, let’s be honest about this, state jobs are low-paying jobs no matter what Republicans claim. (Unless you’re a politician, agency head, or top appointee. They’re taken care of. Nobody else is.) A six-week delayed in getting paid for work they had already performed meant many would miss mortgage payments and be unable to pay food for their families or enough gas to get to work. (Remember, Spellman confiscated the workers’ pay with only 24 hours notice — probably to make sure the workers’ bank accounts were empty when he did it, out of pure worker-hating Republican cussedness.)
When this happened, thousands of state workers and their families qualified for food stamps. But Spellman ordered DSHS to deny food stamps to state workers. If you were a state worker made destitute by Republican Governor Spellman’s illegal pilfering of the pay you had already earned, the only way you could get food stamps for your hungry kids was to quit your state job so you weren’t a state worker. Which apparently is what the worker-hating Republican governor had in mind, just to be ornery. By the way, legal aid sued on behalf of the workers, and a couple years later our state courts ruled that Spellman’s order barring state workers from the food stamp program was illegal (a no-brainer) and directed DSHS to release the food stamps to state workers who should have received them.
Republican governor Spellman dealt with the mortgage problem by issuing a public statement that banks and mortgage companies should voluntarily waive late fees for state workers who couldn’t pay their mortgages because of the theft of their paychecks. None did. Every state worker who paid his or her mortgage late because of what that asshole Spellman did was hit with late fees and a bad credit report. What a fucking jerk that Republican governor was.
Well, the voters thought so, too, because Spellman ended up being a one-term governor — and Washington voters never again elected a Republican as governor. If you multiply 100,000 state workers by average extended family size, you’ve got a lot of pissed-off voters (included the relatives of state workers who were hit up for emergency family loans), and that may have something to do with it.
I was a state worker then and thanks to Spellman I will NEVER vote for any Republican for governor ever again before I’m dead. When I say “never,” I mean never. Neither will a lot of other state workers who lived through those days.
Now, what kind of stupid politician pisses off hundreds of thousands of voters to make a measly $4 million of bank interest? Only a stupid Republican politician is capable of that level of stupidity.
I don’t doubt for a moment that McKenna is capable of the same sort of horseshit. So if you’re a state worker, or a family member of one, and you’re reading this and didn’t know what our last Republican governor did to state workers — well, now you know, and you vote for a Republican gubernatorial candidate at your own peril. I’m not going to bail you out.
Republicans know that (a) the state budget is complicated in the best of times; (b) it gets a lot more complicated when you are trying to juggle money around to balance a budget with limited resources; (c) news reporting in Olympia has become little more than an occassional day-trip for Seattle-area media; and (d) you have thirty to sixty seconds to explain what it all means, along with sound-bites from both sides; (e) the editors are scared of looking like they are taking sides by allowing reporters to call a liar a liar.
In the meantime, today (and yes, this is related to the thread)….
Today Grays Harbor Superior Court Judge Dave Edwards was stabbed in the neck in the courthouse, and deputy Polly Davins was shot in the shoulder and stabbed by a suspect, who had previously gave his name as Michael Thomas. The suspect fled the scene. Police in Olympia have detained a man who goes by the name of Michael Thomas, but it’s not confirmed if he is the same person who stabbed the judge and the deputy.
A year ago Judge Edwards had joined a lawsuit alleging that state budget cuts had made the courthouse a dangerous place for county employees working there. There is no scanning equipment in place, and the budget cuts effectively ended any chance of upgrading security any time in the near future.
So while Senate Republicans and idiots like Tim Eyman continue to fight even the tiniest tax increases (especially tax increases which would impact Tim’s wealthy benefactors and other rich people in the state), employees of the state will continue bear the costs of the budget cuts, with their very lives at risk.