Crisis management often has this unifying effect. When, say, 147 people are frantically bailing water from a sinking boat, it’s unlikely anyone will complain about a cohort being a liberal or a conservative.
That’s one metaphorical way to look at the members of this year’s Legislature as they struggle to resolve a projected $4.6 billion budget deficit. Twice this week — once with words and once through action — Washingtonians have seen how this shared fiscal crisis is bringing the legislators together, across party lines.
We’re not sure how long this harmony will last. We’re confident it won’t be permanent. For now, though, it offers hope that lawmakers will get serious about something Republicans have talked about for years — reform — but which Democrats have embraced only as the punctured budget boat has taken on more water.
In Gov. Chris Gregoire’s State of the State address on Tuesday, she called for “bold” change. This elicited a rare round of laudatory comments from Republicans for the Democratic governor. “To me, the governor was very consistent in her message,” state Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, said in a Columbian story by Howard Buck. “She’s actually been, for the first time, rolling out (ideas.) I’ve felt not quite so alone.”
Rookie state Rep. Ann Rivers of La Center, who delivered the Republican response, said of the governor’s speech, “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I think I wrote her speech, too. Maybe we are singing off the same sheet; maybe we’re in agreement with where we all want to go.’”
Maybe. We’ll see.
Rivers’ colleague in the 18th Legislative District, state Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, was skeptical about whether Gregoire’s agency-consolidation plans could lead to any meaningful savings. Still, Orcutt said “her theme of ‘We’d better dig in and reform our budget’ is right on. I think we’re trying to accomplish the same thing.”
However, state Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, was not exactly at the front of the march to conciliation. He correctly noted: “I really believe we have to reopen state (employee) contracts, and (Gregoire) doesn’t seem to want to go there. I think she folded too soon on the health care issue,” recalling how Gregoire negotiated an almost negligible increase of state workers’ share of insurance premiums from 12 to 15 percent.
The other sign of an evolving bipartisan spirit was more solid than just these mere words. On Monday, the state Senate by voice vote changed a 96-year-old rule and made it easier for lawmakers of both parties to write a coalition budget. Only a simple majority approval is needed now for amendments to budget bills passed by the Senate Ways & Means Committee. Previously, the rule required a 60 percent approval.
This change should make every legislator happy. Republicans — who in November reduced the Democrats’ majority rule in the Senate from 30-19 to 27-22 — have for years demanded that they be allowed a stronger voice in writing budgets. Now they’ve got it. Good for them.
And Democrats, having been deprived by those same voters of additional revenue (tax increases) as a deficit-reduction strategy, are looking for a way to share blame for the brutal budget cuts that are to come. Now they’ve got it. Good for them, too.
Meanwhile, cynics wonder if and when these natural enemies will stop bailing water and resume their characteristic partisan spats.
