Yellow Pages
It is almost painful to watch the Skagit County commissioners during the ongoing work sessions on the 2010 budget. Elected officials would much rather be able to say “yes” to important needs than “no.”
The Parks and Recreation Department wants to throw the Skagit County Fair under the bus. The Sheriff’s Office wants $500,000 to recapture some positions lost through attrition. The Planning Department is under water due to lost revenue in permit fees and needs money from the general fund to keep the doors open.
It isn’t a pretty picture. But it could well represent what some economists are calling the “new normal” – declining tax revenues due to high unemployment.
The budget process itself may need to undergo major revamping as local government struggles to maintain basic services with a shrinking tax base.
We don’t envy the task ahead for the county commissioners. They are faced with a looming $2.5 million deficit for the 2010 budget. The 2009 budget, in which a $3.7 million deficit was covered by a combination of staff cutbacks and new revenues, is the baseline for the current deliberations.
There may be no relief in the near term to the downward ratcheting of tax revenues to local government. Given the numbers of unemployed and underemployed, the much-ballyhooed recovery from the recession is far better news to big banks than to the ordinary American family.
Washington State’s tax system relies heavily on sales and property taxes. With unemployment remaining at 10 percent and threatening to go higher, people can’t afford to feed the retail cash registers that, in turn, feed sales taxes to state and local government.
Property taxes can’t fill the gap. The same consumer pocketbook pinch that has cut into retail sales represents ready resistance to any increases. Initiative 1033, which we oppose, could further straitjacket local government.
We cannot assume that our consumer-driven economy will ever regain its former glory. Just as families have been forced to make some hard decisions about their spending priorities, local government must do the same.
The budget process cannot rely simply on across-the-board cuts for departments, but rather must be built on a clear understanding of the services that mean the most to our citizens. That could mean tossing programs that may have outlived their usefulness and redirecting the focus of individual departments.
A major driver of governmental budget growth has been the increase in the costs of health benefits. It is time that public employees assume more responsibility for their health care by picking up a greater share of the premiums on their coverage just as most private sector employees have had to do.
We need good local governance for those things that most directly affect our lives – public safety, transportation, solid waste, clean water and a host of other services.
However, this economy is forcing the public and its elected officials to make hard choices about what government can’t do as well as those things it must.
Editorials reflect the consensus opinion of the editorial board and are written by its members: Publisher L. Stedem Wood and newsroom editors Dick Clever and Colette Weeks. Signed columns reflect the authors’ viewpoints.
