Gregoire's proposed budget cuts jarring

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The devastating new realities facing education, health care and public safety became more apparent Thursday as Gov. Chris Gregoire rolled out a proposed list of alternatives to fix a $2 billion budget shortfall.

Among the proposals: increasing class sizes, cutting subsidized health insurance for the working poor, and reducing supervision of inmates released from prison. Roughly $545 million would be cut from education and $812 million sliced from a wide range of human services programs.

"I have nowhere else to turn," she said at a news conference in Olympia. "I have to be honest with myself and the people of the state of Washington. While my heart is there, my pocketbook is empty."

Gregoire denounced her own proposals as a necessary evil and placed the blame on the lingering effects of the Great Recession, Wall Street corruption, an ineffective Congress and the wide reach of the European debt crisis.

"This is not something over which we have control," Gregoire said. "We're at the point where we could pull out of this or we could slip into another recession."

Central Washington lawmakers called many of the possible cuts worrisome, especially reductions in school funding. But they say the priority now is determining the role of government under tight circumstances and passing legislation that spurs business and job growth.

"Five years ago, we said this was going to be the result with expenses outpacing revenue," Rep. Charles Ross, R-Naches, said. "We were looked at as Chicken Little."

House Republicans will meet this morning in Olympia to begin work on their own budget strategy heading into the Nov. 28 special legislative session, Ross said. He said Republicans are also looking at legislation to improve the job economy, namely reducing regulations and fees on small businesses that Ross says would give them the confidence to hire more workers.

"We have to make Washington a place where people want to open businesses," he said.

Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, said there are no easy solutions in cutting $2 billion from a budget that has been in place for only six months, not to mention what dropoff the Nov. 17 revenue forecast may hold. At the same time, King says the state shares just as much of the blame for overextending itself as economic factors outside the state have played a role in the revenue shortfall.

"The budget has been bloated, it's inefficient," King said. "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."

But Marty Brown, the governor's budget director, said no one on either side of the aisle could have predicted the recession would strike this deep and linger for years.

"If anyone could have predicted this recession would be as long as it is, I would like to meet them," Brown said in an interview with the Yakima Herald-Republic's editorial board.

Brown conceded the state could have done more to prevent the impacts of the recession, but the governor's priority is looking forward to what these cuts mean for the state. Without getting into specifics, he said residents should ask themselves whether cuts are acceptable to the population as a whole or what other possible solutions are out there.

"It has got to be a part of the discussion -- is this the state we want to live in?" Brown said in a phone interview.

Local health care professionals who work with low-income residents facing reduction or elimination of state aid said the cuts would balance the budget, but would increase costs to the state by straining other resources.

Gregoire's suggestions include eliminating the Disability Lifeline and Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Treatment Support Act, which would end medical services to 21,000 clients and save $110 million.

Possibilities also include eliminating the Basic Health Plan, which subsidizes health care to 35,000 low-income residents at a cost of $48.1 million, and reduce Apple Health for Kids coverage for a savings of up to $34 million at the expense of 25,000 undocumented children who will no longer have medical coverage.

"They're cutting vital services that have saved money in the long run," Lori Brown, director for Southeast Washington Aging and Longterm Care, said. "It'll overstress our systems and we aren't going to get out of this hole we're in."

Carlos Olivares, executive director of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, said elimination of the Basic Health Plan could take a significant amount of the agency's revenue, and other possible cuts such as a proposal to end over-the-counter pharmaceutical coverage to Medicaid recipients would force many of their clients to choose between eating dinner or affording medication.

"There will be horrible choices that some of these families will have to make," Olivares said.

He said the cuts would result in long-term implications, such as an increase in emergency room use and more disease in underserved populations. Olivares said the state must consider new revenue options before taking drastic measures.

"They can't simply put this out there and say, 'We can't do anything,'" he said.

Rural areas would not only take a significant hit from reductions in education and human services spending, but in cuts to natural resources funding as well. Gregoire proposes reducing administrative and operations grants to conservation districts by $1.4 million; shrinking agricultural burning subsidies by $222,000; and suspending $300,000 in payments to compensate farmers for damage to crops and livestock caused by wildlife.

* Mike Faulk can be reached at 509-577-7675 or mfaulk@yakimaherald.com.