Washington Policy Center Blog

Private libraries: a novel idea

If both sides of the issues can agree on anything, it's that citizens are growing weary of paying more taxes.  Even people who aren't necessarily opposed to more taxes tend to favor them only if they're imposed on someone else.

Voters in Jackson County, Oregon, recently rejected two bond measures for their library system, and consequently the libraries are now closed.  County officials just signed a five-year management contract with Library Systems & Services to manage their system.  The contract amount was about half of the cost of each bond that voters had rejected.  Interestingly, even the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has submitted a bid for the contract.

The private contract allows for innovative flexibility.  Salaries for the employees will be comparable to those received by county employees who staffed the libraries, but since there's no union contract LSSI can utilize available volunteers as well.  Moreover, LSSI offers benefits the county did not, such as tuition reimbursement and a bonus program.

There's a lesson here for Washington.  The private sector can have a positive role in providing services for which people traditionally look to government.  Quite often this results in lower costs, increased efficiency, and a community-responsive flexibility that a government program can't offer.

Hat tip to Kurt Weber at the SPN State Policy Blog.

WPC is looking for a Communications Assistant

Washington Policy Center is hiring!  We're looking for a Communications Assistant.  Please read the job posting for more information about the position and details on how to apply.

Bill Gates and The Skeptical Environmentalist

The Seattle Times did an excellent series on the Gates Foundation this week, focusing on their efforts to combat malaria. While the headline emphasizes mosquito nets, the inside features this photo discussing the re-introduction of DDT as a tool. The World Health Organization said this about DDT in their press release:

"We must take a position based on the science and the data," said Dr Arata Kochi, Director of WHO’s Global Malaria Programme. “One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.”

What is more interesting is that the Gates Foundation priorities mirror those identified in an effort coordinated by "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg. The Copenhagen Consensus, organized by Lomborg, brought together experts in many areas, including a number of Nobel Prize winning economists, and analyzed where best to spend $50 billion to have the greatest impact on overall well-being of people around the world. Their top six priorities are:

1) HIV/AIDS prevention
2) Reducing malnutrition through provision of micronutrients
3) Trade liberalization
4) Reducing malaria
5) Reducing malnutrition through agricultural development
6) Improved access to water and sanitation

This list has been attacked by environmentalists because the Consensus listed efforts to reduce climate change as "Bad Projects," coming in 15th, 16th and 17th out of 17.

The Gates Foundation web page highlights a number of their areas of focus as well. They include, in no particular order:

1) Agricultural development
2) HIV/AIDS prevention
3) Reducing malaria
4) Reducing malnutrition

They focus on other things as well, such as developing vaccines, tuberculosis and acute diarrheal illness. Overall, the lists are very similar. This is not to say that the Gates Foundation is following the Copenhagen Consensus or using it in their decision making. That, however, may send a more striking message.

If the Gates Foundation prioritization is independent of the Copenhagen Consensus their conclusions would seem to confirm the analysis of the experts who developed the Consensus. I don't know what the Gates' position is on climate change and I don't mean to imply they agree with the Copenhagen Consensus position on that issue. It does seem clear, however, that the Foundation is putting its money in those areas it believes will have the greatest impact.

It is important to remember, that as we are asked to spend billions on reducing CO2 emissions, are we really doing the best for the people of our planet? Are we focusing on climate change because it is the most pressing issue or because it fits other values held by those in the environmental community?

Given the general agreement about where to spend money to help suffering people, the answer seems clear.

The Olympian's take on I-960

One of the those entertaining bright flashes that come rarely into the dull working life of a policy analyst occurred today when I saw The Olympian’s editorial opposing I-960. I thought I would be in for a tightly-argued case against the initiative, but almost every point given in the editorial sounds more like a good reason to vote for the measure. Now, normally I love biting satiric writing (seeming to argue one position while actually presenting the opposite), until I realized The Olympian’s editorial writers weren’t doing it on purpose.

The Olympian says “it’s an outrage” that no one in state government can list how many fees we pay, but we should not, as I-960 would, “force lawmakers to vote on every single fee increase.” Well, if lawmakers have to vote on every fee, at least they would know how many there are. So that solves that problem.

Second, The Olympian says lawmakers shouldn’t be intimidated by publishing lists, as I-960 would require, of how they vote on fee and tax bills. If by “intimidated” the editors mean people find out how their legislators vote on important bills, then I guess the whole idea of representative democracy is intimidating. It’s like a Congressman complaining, “We’d get so much more done if it weren’t for those annoying constituents!” Amidst the dry routine of policy research, it’s refreshingly unusual to come across an argument for a position that is supported by a list of reasons for doing the opposite.

-Paul Guppy, Vice President for Research

Why does the governor want to take a health policy dispute to court?

Governor Gregoire wants to the sue the federal government over expansion of the State Children’s Health Program (SCHIP).

Judges are in no better position to set health care policy than elected officials. Expansion of SCHIP is not a dispute over interpretation of existing law. Bush wants to expand it by $5 billion and focus health care assistance to children from low-income families. Democrats want to expand it by as much as $70 billion, cover families earning up to $63,000 a year, cover more adults, and count people up to age 25 as "children."

Bush does not want to cut SCHIP, as the media says. He wants to expand the program. Democrats want to expand it more, using a program for low-income children to cover higher-income families and adults. As often happens in reporting about government spending, a slower rate of increase is being called a cut. But no matter how much bigger SCHIP becomes, this is simply not a question for judges to decide. Elected officials should set health policy - after all, that is what we hired them to do.

Besides, Gregoire doesn’t need permission from Bush or anyone else to expand taxpayer subsidized health care in our state in any way she likes.

This year the legislature controlled a $2 billion surplus. Any or all of that money could have been used to expand state health subsidy programs, no lawsuit required.

Paul Guppy, Vice President for Research

Washington Policy Center

“Pension padding”

Sunday’s Spokesman-Review highlighted the troubling practice of police officers in Spokane and other cities “using off-duty pay to supercharge their state retirement pensions.” According to the investigative reporting of Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele:

While the extra pay boosts the gross incomes of moonlighting officers, it also means cities and the state must make greater contributions to the police pension system . . .

A review of Spokane Police Department payroll records from 2003-2006 shows approximately 100 officers a year – about one-third of the force – were paid a total of $691,687 by private businesses and nonprofits for off-duty work, an annual average increase of $172,922 to their gross incomes . . .

Government budget experts say they're not certain how much the practice is costing cities and the state, but a nonpartisan policy analyst believes the Legislature should take a closer look at the impact on taxpayers . . .

The Office of the State Actuary, which oversees state pensions, has not examined the fiscal impact of off-duty pay to cities and the state. But Rep. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor, who is considered an expert on the state's retirement system, said she intends "to look at this in detail."

The full article on this potentially expensive practice is worth reading.

The ten things you should know about “roads and transit”

The ten things you should know about “roads and transit”

1. Accounting for inflation and debt-interest, the total cost of the “roads and transit” measure is $47,000,000,000.

2. By every measure, transit spending represents nearly two-thirds of the total package.

3. Sound Transit’s sales taxes never end.

4. The ST2 proposal adds up to 96,000 service hours and spends $328 million on the ST Express bus system, despite a 35% reduction in demand.

5. Sound Transit is extremely inefficient when compared to alternative public transportation plans. Taxpayers could purchase the equivalent of 164 Transit Now packages (an alternative transit plan that passed in King County last year) for the same cost as ST2. This new Transit Now type of service could have an estimated ridership of more than 9 million daily riders and add 28,700 new buses.

6. Every year Puget Sound residents pay an average of $1,257 per household in transportation related taxes. If approved, the plan would increase the current transportation tax burden by $286, or as much as 24% per family. (Note: This does not consider the increase costs businesses would pass on to consumers. Estimates show these costs would add over $800 per year, per family, in transportation taxes if the “roads and transit” measure passes.)

7. Sound Transit’s plan to place light rail on Interstate 90 will increase vehicle delay on the bridge by 27% during the morning peak drive and 24% during the afternoon peak.

8. The light rail option will cost the commercial trucking industry about $7.5 million annually simply to cross the I-90 bridge during peak commute times. This is 54% more than if policymakers did nothing on I-90.

9. The light rail plan on I-90 also appears to violate the federal government’s National Strategy to Reduce Congestion.

10. Sound Transit’s plan to spend more than $30 billion to move less than 1% of all trips by 2030 is not only expensive, it is not even enough to reduce today’s congestion at today’s current population.

Bonus: It would be cheaper to pay Sound Transit’s new riders $100,000 each to not drive.  The impact on traffic congestion would be the same and taxpayers would save more than $8 billion dollars.

This analysis was taken from an ongoing series of coverage on the RTID/ST2 ballot measure. The installments include: Part I: The Cost of Sound Transit, Part II: Your Transportation Tax Burden, Part III: Cost Exceeds Benefits in Sound Transit’s Light Rail Expansion, Part IV: Light Rail and Interstate 90, and Part V: The Imbalance of Roads and Transit

Forest Fires are Good...Unless They Are Bad

Yesterday, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly assailed the "Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg who was in town last night promoting his new book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming. Lomborg argues that while temperatures are rising, it is not the catastrophe many make it out to be. He does argue that it is a problem that should be addressed, but in a smart way.

That is an unacceptable position to Connelly, who cites local forests for evidence to rebut Lomborg's statement that "We will not lose our forests. We will not run out of energy, raw materials or water."

Connelly says: "He should travel into British Columbia, where warmer winters in the very cold Chilcotin Plateau have allowed the mountain pine beetle to embark on what's likely to be a cross-North America killing spree."

He goes on to note that these massive areas of beetle-killed trees, along with higher temperatures, have led to an increase in the number of forest fires, saying "What follows beetle kill? Fire. Forests in the Pasayten Wilderness Area, the Entiat Valley and slopes above Lake Chelan have burned in recent years." He chides those who minimize the threat saying, "Global-warming skeptics make more excuses than Holocaust deniers. They blame faulty fire-suppression efforts. They claim the pine beetle has always been around."

But it wasn't so long ago that environmentalists praised by Connelly were minimizing the threat of forest fire from unhealthy forests. In 2000, the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, a group Connelly has praised repeatedly for their work on the Loomis forest scoffed at the threat of forest fires. They wrote in their Winter 2000 newsletter that "The fires were undoubtedly dramatic, but did they really inform of a crisis? How much really burned, where did the burns occur, and were these fires really that unusual? To answer these questions NWEA and other conservation groups jointly commissioned a study from the Pacific Biodiversity Institute (PBI) to uncover the details of the 2000 fire season."

What did they find?

"The PBI report revealed the 6.9 million acres that burned this year were well below the 13.9 million-acre average that burned from 1916 to 1999." They went on to say that " 'it was time' for many of the forests to burn and it was, for the most part, completely natural."

Now, just a few years later, these same fires are evidence that only a "holocaust denier" could ignore.

Interestingly, the Governor's Climate Advisory Team Forestry Working Group disagrees with Connelly. Their first proposal is to improve forest health, noting that by reducing "the risk of wildfire, pest, and disease outbreaks this proposed option will aim to reduce fuels buildup attributable to decades of fire suppression." They went on to say that "We feel strategic thinning [of forests] and similar treatments are most prudent in the climate policy context."

In other words the group looking to stop global warming in Washington blames forest fires and the increase in insects on past management practices including fire suppression -- not global warming.

As he explained last night, the title of Lomborg's book is not only a play on the theme of global warming, but a call for everyone discussing the issue to cool the rhetoric. Sage advice.

ALEC embraces budget transparency proposals

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has formally adopted two model bills to help improve budget transparency. ALEC is the nation's largest nonpartisan, individual membership organization of state legislators, with more than 2,400 legislator members from all 50 states, and 86 former members serving in the U.S. Congress.

 

As a voting member of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force I was able to bring these proposals to ALEC’s attention.

 

Here is today’s joint ALEC/WPC press release:

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) say taxpayers should be able to easily access and track how their state is spending their tax dollars through the creation of a public Web site.

 

Passed by ALEC members at their Annual Meeting in July, the “Taxpayers Transparency Act,” an ALEC “model bill,” requires each state’s budget office to create and maintain a searchable-database Web site. The site would detail state government spending and performance results. The Web site would be open to the public at no cost.

 

"Government should have the same ease of understanding its budget as we expect from private sector business," said Rep. Jamie Van Fossen of Iowa, who also serves as ALEC’s Public Sector Chair of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.

 

All government department budgets would be searchable, including board commissions and institutions of higher education. This includes individual state agencies, government programs, as well as elective offices in the executive branch and the legislature.

 

“The Jeffersonian principle of limited government is integral to our mission at ALEC,” said Jonathan Williams, ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Director. “Our new budget transparency model language will give lawmakers a great tool to protect taxpayers by holding government accountable for wasteful spending.” 

 

Also passed at the July annual meeting was the “72-Hour Budget Review Act,” an ALEC model bill that requires a “72-hour timeout” before a budget bill could be voted on after its public introduction.

 

Both model bills were written by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and introduced by Jason Mercier, Director of the Washington Policy Center’s new Center for Government Reform, a non-partisan think tank based in Seattle.

 

“An accountable and responsible budget is next to impossible to achieve without accurate information about the spending proposed and time to process that information,” said Mercier. “We are thrilled that ALEC has embraced these policies and hope that policymakers across that nation will do the same.”

Lawmakers lucky, not prudent

The Spokesman-Review has a great op-ed today by AWB’s Richard Davis, “Revenue growth can't close spending gap.”

 

Regarding the state’s fiscal health, Davis notes:

 

Washington's economy continues to mock the dismal predictions of the perennially pessimistic. While not placing myself in that category, I have regularly railed against "unsustainable state spending," saying the 2007 Legislature virtually guaranteed tax hikes or deep program reductions in the foreseeable future. Each time, within weeks, another strong economic report would appear to repudiate my judicious jeremiad.

 

It happened again last Friday. Chang Mook Sohn, the state’s top economist, released his forecast of state revenues: up another $282 million. As the Associated Press reported, it’s the 16th consecutive quarterly report that Sohn has adjusted upward. That’s four years of better-than-anticipated economic performance. Nonetheless, I remain concerned . . .

 

The $282 million increase might look like a big number, but it’s negligible – an increase of less than 1 percent. Still, you much prefer that even negligible revisions go up rather than down. Consider the reaction had Sohn adopted the forecast based on the average view of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. That alternative take on the economy would have produced a downward adjustment about $100 million. While also negligible, the shift in the trend line would have sparked spirited debate over the state’s economic and fiscal well-being and the appropriate legislative response.

 

This continued good fiscal news obviously justifies the legislature’s spending binge last session, right? Not so fast says Davis:

 

More important, lawmakers must bring state spending under control. Spending growth cannot long outpace revenue collections. So far, lawmakers have been lucky, not prudent. Friday's forecast bought them a little time by increasing the budget cushion. But the long-term trend points to an entirely unnecessary budget collapse. That's not pessimism. It's realism.

 

The question remaining for taxpayers: Will lawmakers wake up from their spending fantasy world in time to head off the tax increase threat growing with each new unsustainable budget they adopt?