Washington governor ignores the basics of budget logic

Our governor’s plan to raid the state contingency fund to pay for schools, then repay the fund with a new tax, violates sound financial principles.

Creating a budget is not rocket science. The basic principles are the same for every organization, be they military units, government agencies or families.

The first step is to list all the possible demands for funds that you can think of. A good budget also includes regular inputs into an emergency fund to take care of those things that you didn’t think of.

Step two is to arrange all these necessary expenditures in priority order. A normal household might put food and housing near the top and the vacation to Tahiti near the bottom.

Step three is to overlay your expected income over the prioritized list of wants and needs. The items at the bottom of the list don’t get funded. You might think you need a new car this year but not have enough funds to pay for it. The items on the list above the car and vacation on the beach have higher priority.

If Gov. Jay Inslee doesn’t have enough money to pay for schools, he has listed schools too far down the priority list. He considers every Department of Social and Health Services program more important than schools. He deems every Environmental Protection Agency project more important than public education. Every transportation project, every subsidy, everything in his budget is more important than a quality education for our children.

I find this hard to believe. Thus, our governor must have an agenda other than a sound logical budget.

A contingency fund is for unforeseen emergencies. Earthquakes are unforeseen emergencies, as are disastrous floods and Interstate 5 bridge failures.

School funding, however, is not an unforeseen emergency. We have been operating public schools since we became a state. It is one of our most important obligations. So important that our state Constitution requires they be fully funded.

Taking money out of the state contingency fund for non-emergency programs is a dangerous precedent. The first time is the hardest to justify. The second time will be easier, and the third even more so.

In short order, the fund will be depleted, and when we encounter a real emergency, there will be nowhere to turn. Don’t let him do it.

It could be that the governor intentionally put schools low on his priority list as a political maneuver to gain support for his carbon tax proposal. The carbon tax itself is nothing more than a smoke screen. If you cut through all the haze, it becomes a huge gas tax increase. This new tax will do little if anything to clean up the atmosphere. The gas tax in Europe has exceeded $5 a gallon for several years now without a noticeable reduction of cars on the road.

I am all for cleaning up the atmosphere. I would even pay more gas tax if I thought it would help, but there is no evidence that it will. The carbon tax is nothing more than a veiled attempt to get more money from Washington taxpayers. Don’t let him do it.

We need to fully fund public education as directed by our state Constitution. But we need to do so by making schools a priority, not by allowing the governor to use our children’s future as a political football. Don’t let him do it.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a freelance columnist for over 19 years.