Blog

About Those Tuition Increases…

The theme of this week's posts at the Becker-Posner blog is tuition increases at public universities.  Posner argues that keeping tuition low for all students–regardless of ability to pay–is unwarranted: In any event, there is no case at all from an overall social standpoint for subsidizing students who would pay full college tuition, without the […]

Health Care and Employee Benefits Spending Charts

In her State of the State address yesterday (reported on by the Seattle Times here), Gov. Gregoire pointed to two areas of state spending that must be tackled, for the long-term health of the budget:  health care and pension spending.  The governor noted that health care costs have doubled over the past decade, while pension […]

January Collections Report

The Office of the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council today released the January Economic and Revenue Update. The “headline” numbers show collections for the most recent month to be $36.9 million (3.4 percent) greater than anticipated under the November revenue forecast. Cumulatively, for the two months since the November forecast, revenues are $61.0 million (2.3 […]

Fixing the Budget Problem by Reducing Waste and Fraud?

A recent Elway Poll, according to the Seattle Times, found that 71 percent of those polled think the budget could be balanced simply by reducing waste and fraud.  This is wishful thinking.  While reducing waste and fraud can certainly contribute to the budget solution, the magnitude of the problem ($4.6 billion) is such that it […]

Governor Gregoire’s 2011–13 Budget Proposal

Our Policy Brief on Gov. Gregoire’s 2011–13 budget proposal is available here.

Governor's 2011 Supplemental

We have a new policy brief on Gov. Gregoire’s proposed 2011 supplemental budget.  Although the legislature made deep cuts to the 2009-11 budget during its special session a few weeks ago, they did not completely close the gap.  The governor’s proposal would do so.  It takes into account revised estimates as to the costs to […]

Only the Beginning

Today we published a policy brief on the special session that took place on Saturday.  As discussed in the brief, legislators made good headway in addressing the $1.1 billion 2009-11 budget shortfall:  They reduced it by $588 million. The $588 million comes in the form of budget reductions ($490.4 million), fund transfers ($54 million), a […]

December Revenue Collections Report

The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council’s monthly Economic and Revenue Update came out today. Revenue for the November 11 to December 10 collection period was $1,593.4 million, $24.1 greater than had been forecast. However, $20.9 million of the $24.1 million positive variance was due to one-time items such as audit payments and unclaimed property transfers […]

More on the Special Session Agreement

The House Democrats have released the full list of reductions in the agreement that legislators and the Governor came to yesterday.  I have added these proposals to my spreadsheet comparing the different ideas; it can be accessed here: Reduction Comparison 12.10.10 The agreement cuts DSHS, Natural Resources and Legislative by less than any of the […]

Pre-Special Session Agreement

The Seattle Times reports that the Governor and the legislature have come to an agreement on a way to cut $790 million in FY2011. It does not eliminate the Basic Health Plan or Disability Lifeline, but it does eliminate non-emergency adult dental (Medicaid).  The Governor’s idea to change the reimbursement method for Federally Qualifying Health […]