Opening A Can Of Worms
Behind the Scenes by Slightly North
This may backfire. Governor Gregoire has asked Washingtonians for ideas on how to cut the state budget. On the governor’s website, she wants to know our opinion on the following:
* What government programs should we sacrifice to ensure that we can continue to provide the essentials to the people of our state?
* What ways can we reform state government to provide services more efficiently and cost-effectively?
* What government functions and programs might be better handled in the private sector or the nonprofit arena?
I don’t know about you, but I think this may open a can of some particularly nasty worms. It also has the potential to really have our needs heard by someone high enough on the “food chain” to do something about it.
You’d think that feedback page would have a link to the budget, but you’d be wrong. This PDF seems to be a pretty good overview of this year’s budget.
In short, 51.7% of our taxes gets spent on education, another 30.3% on all other social services, 5.8% on corrections, 5.3% on servicing out debt, 1.8% on government operations, 1.6% on natural resources (whatever that means), and the remaining 3.5% on everything else. Hard to see what to cut at that level.
Wonder how much we could save on the corrections budget by letting all the trivial drug offenders go.