The Olympian today has a piece focusing on proposals to contract out some state services in the 2011-13 budget.  It also touches on state employee reactions to the proposals and talks about some of the merger ideas from the governor.

The Senate budget calls for contracting out more of the state’s back-office work, a small piece of the savings proposed by the plan but another sign of this year’s greater influence for the Legislature’s minority Republicans and centrist Democrats.

State employee unions are becoming louder in opposing the plan, even as changes are being considered in negotiations. . . .

Decisions on outsourcing will have consequences for Gregoire’s proposed consolidation of the state’s back-office functions into a single agency. . . .

Most of the governor’s proposals for agency mergers never gained much traction with state lawmakers, including mergers targeted at education administration, the management of parks and wildlife, and agencies devoted to helping racial minorities.

In a Thrive Washington paper, we laid out the case for more contracting out and recommended that contracting out authority should not be subject to collective bargaining.  Another Thrive Washington paper called for restructuring the state executive branch, including adopting the governor’s plan to reorganize state natural resource agencies.