Sunday Spin: Where to start in opening the budget process?
This is clear in the discussions – some might call them grumblings – of proposed raises for state employees included in Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposed budget after contract negotiations between his staff and the heads of the employees’ unions.
Republicans, who generally speaking don’t much care for unions, are questioning the raises but are particularly peeved at the way they are negotiated. That is to say, without their sage wisdom and input. Legislators get the negotiated contracts and vote them up or down as part of the budget process. If the latter, the unions and governor’s staff go back to the table.
This is what the law specifies, or at least has for more than a decade. There are some problems with it. If, for example, a governor has received significant support from the unions in his or her election campaigns , there are always suggestions that the staff isn’t tough enough in bargaining. And if the Legislature gives the contracts thumbs down, new ones have to be negotiated, so the old contract stays in place and this all comes up again the following year.
Republicans have proposed opening up the negotiation sessions, not just to the Legislature or some subset of designees, but to the public. Think of the prospects: TVW could fit contract talks into its schedule when the Legislature is out of town and programming options are thin. Reporters could sit in the background and tweet each side’s opening offers on salaries or pensions or vacation rules, setting off a Twitter war among followers for and against.
This sounds like a great idea for advocates of open government, and if the Legislature were a paragon of openness when it comes to budgeting, closing off contract negotiations wouldn’t make sense. But it’s not completely open there, either. The budget committees have open hearings at which scores of people get a minute or two to tell legislators what they think is great or terrible about a budget plan, then the top members of the committees go behind closed doors, for days or even weeks, to work out a budget deal.
They might release that 400-plus page deal one morning, hold a committee hearing on it that afternoon, and put it to a vote the next day. After a similar process in the other chamber, the heads of the committees get together in a closed room, work out a compromise, and push it through both chambers in the closing days – sometimes hours – of a session. Closed meetings allow for frank discussions and honest negotiations, we’re told.
Last week, Republican leaders who have been pushing for open contract negotiations were asked if they’d also be willing to open those sessions, or the caucus meetings where their members discuss things they think should and shouldn’t be in the budget and whether they’d vote for them. Not a chance.
The Legislature has open committee hearings, and it approves the budget in open debate on the floor, Senate Majority Leader Mark Schoesler, of Ritzville, said. “I’d like to see the governor move to our level of openness, and then we’ll talk about the next level.”
Gov. Jay Inslee apparently thinks he’s on their level, and had a similar dismissal for the Republicans’ bill to open the contract talkes. How negotiators get to the contract “is not the issue,” he said, because it goes to the Legislature, is part of their budget process, subject to committee hearings and a public vote.
“There are reasons people treat negotiations in a confidential way,” Inslee said. Just, apparently, as there are reasons legislators treat their budget talks and caucus discussions in a confidential way.
Yo pot. Kettle here. Are we ebony or pitch-black these days?
