In Our View: More Silver Linings

Continuing our search for silver linings in the Great Recession cloud, The Columbian has found two consolations that won’t put any bucks in your pocket but still warrant at least a gratifying grin. The Legislature planted a couple of bad seeds a few years ago, but the economic drought has kept both from sprouting.

In 2007, state lawmakers passed a poorly designed and (worse) unfunded paid family leave program for parents of infants. There’s certainly nothing wrong with anyone taking parental leave from work. And we’re glad federal law requires businesses with 50 or more workers to extend up to three months of unpaid leave to these individuals. Protecting those jobs for a specific period of time is a valuable and proper benefit for employees. And we love even more the fact that many private employers choose to offer paid family leave as an incentive to recruit and keep good workers. That makes the free-enterprise system even more competitive.

But several flaws plagued the state law. First, it shifted part of the financial responsibility for having kids away from the parents. Second, paying for the program was problematic, and the only solution legislators could agree on was ghastly: a two-cents-an-hour tax subtracted from all workers’ pay. This would mean that all workers would be forced to pay for the absence of a few workers. Consider this absurd possibility that we described in a 2008 editorial: In some cases, low-income workers would be forced to pay for the family leave taken by high-income workers.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with paid family leave if it’s funded by private employers or perhaps by individual workers’ savings program. But requiring such a program among all workers — and especially with no means-testing or needs assessment applied — is the wrong approach. Fortunately, the economic crisis has postponed this state program until at least 2012. Our hope is that it is postponed into perpetuity. Gov. Chris Gregoire said recently, “I don’t deny at all the social benefits of paid family leave, I just don’t think we can afford it.” For now, that’s a good enough reason, and if she can see the time when we can afford it, her vision is stronger than the average Washingtonian’s.

The second bad state law that is not being implemented for economic reasons is a sales tax rebate program for poor people, patterned after the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. This well-intentioned but awkward measure was championed by state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, and in the private sector by Denny Heck, currently a Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District. In a 2008 op-ed he co-authored for The Columbian, Heck argued that a sales tax rebate for low-income people makes sense because they often must “choose whether to buy food, see a doctor, or pay the heating bill.” Heck also cited high unemployment rates in four counties in Southwest Washington, noting that residents in those counties need the assistance.

Such generosity was understandable, but we couldn’t afford it then, or now; the sales tax rebate has been postponed until 2012. There’s little indication any economic recovery will reach full force by then and, even if that happens, funding of the program would have to begin next year, when the state is expected to confront yet another budget deficit, possibly about $2 billion.

Rep. Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham, correctly explained this week that “at a certain point in time, you don’t have much credibility if you don’t follow through on what you said you’re going to do.” That is what is happening with paid family leave and a state sales tax rebate, neither of which Washingtonians can afford now or in the foreseeable future.