Gates on State Budgets
Today Bill Gates is speaking at the yearly TED (technology, education, design) conference. In a blog post, he says that his talk will be about state budgets: This time, I wanted to share some of what I’ve been learning about state budgets. I got interested in them because states supply most of the money for […]
March 01 , 2011 - Kriss Sjoblom
Average State Employee Pay Increases
Following up on Dick’s posts yesterday and today on employee compensation, here is a chart showing annual increases in average state employee pay for the years 1999 through 2009. I have excluded higher education because tuition increases have provided extra pay increases for faculty in recent years. The underlying data come from the fiscal.wa.gov web […]
March 01 , 2011 - Richard S. Davis
As we were saying about compensation comparisons …
… they’re not easy to get right. USA Today headlines today that Wisconsin is one of 41 states where public workers earn more than their private sector counterparts. According to the paper’s analysis of data from the U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, State, city and school district workers earned an average of $50,774 in […]
February 28 , 2011 - Richard S. Davis
Sorting the data on public sector compensation …
Well before the protests in Madison, Wisconsin, touched sympathetic nerves around the country, the disparity between public and private sector employee compensation drew controversy. A headline in Sunday’s Seattle Times asks, “Have Washington state workers given their fair share?” It’s both unanswerable and, in many respects, off point. Compensation for services provided is not the […]
February 28 , 2011 - Emily Makings
The Art of Budget Cutting
We're already at the end of February, which means the legislature has only four months to close out the 2009-11 budget. There's a lot of work ahead, but let's start the week with the funnies.
February 25 , 2011 - Emily Makings
Supplementing Some More
A week ago, Gov. Gregoire signed the fourth 2009-11 supplemental budget into law. Our policy brief on what’s included is available here. Taking into account the governor’s vetoes, the supplemental reduces the remaining NGFS shortfall by $361 million. Unfortunately, four rounds and cumulative spending cuts totaling $1.1 billion later, the 2009-11 budget is still not […]
February 24 , 2011 - Kriss Sjoblom
Preliminary March Economic Forecast
The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council posted the Preliminary March Economic Forecast today. The summary memo from Arun Raha (ERFC Executive Director) to the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors is here; calendar year tables are here; fiscal year tables are here. With regards to the national economy Raha’s memo has this good news: The near-term […]
February 23 , 2011 - Richard S. Davis
Competing to deliver public services …
That’s the theme of my column this morning, which also considers some recent activity in Wisconsin (you might have read about the collective bargainng flap there) and the UK (which has not gotten the same visibility). Here’s my conclusion: Government employee unions come under increased scrutiny as budget shortfalls force cutbacks in public services. Public […]
February 20 , 2011 - Kriss Sjoblom
Tuition Transfer Update
As I discussed in an earlier post, the Senate version of the early action supplemental budget cut general fund–state funding to the higher education coordinating board (HEC Board) for the state need grant by $25.4 million. The Senate supplemental budget backfilled this loss in two steps. The first step was an appropriation of $25.4 million […]
February 17 , 2011 - Richard S. Davis
About Thrive Washington …
In the latest edition of AWB’s Washington Business magazine, I write about Thrive Washington, the research and communications partnership between the WRC and the Washington Roundtable. It’s seems wrong to quote myself. Please go to the column and let me know what you think.