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News & ArtsTuesday, November 8, 2011
2012 Rob McKenna's "New Direction": Billions More in State Spending, and a Smaller State Government to Pay for It All
Posted by Eli Sanders on Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 9:53 AM
- Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, launching the product (himself) this morning in Bellevue
"My friends, we can do this," said Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, holding an iPad and pacing a Bellevue stage like a high-tech pitchman as he rolled out his "New Direction for Washington State" this morning as part of his campaign for governor.
"We can create jobs," McKenna told a crowd of supporters. "We can educate our children to fill those jobs. And we can reform state government to pay for all of this."
How, exactly, is that going to happen after we've already made $10 billion in cuts to state government over the last three years, and at a time when yet another $2 billion revenue shortfall is hanging over Washington's head?
Unclear. McKenna was long on plans for the billions more in education spending he wants to take place, and short on specifics for how he'd get the money to pay for those plans. But in general it boiled down to this: Reducing the number of state employees (which, it should be noted, is not an act of job creation); making state employees pay more for their health care (including teachers); and "performance management," which McKenna described as running the state like he's been running the attorney general's office, with an emphasis on rewarding employees who find ways to save money and a de-emphasis on what he termed "the culture of seniority." This, McKenna said, will save a lot of money—"Over time, it will be billions," he promised.
McKenna didn't say how much time it would take to realize these "billions" in savings. But he did promise to take expensive, immediate, "non-negotiable steps" to improve education in Washington should he be elected next year. “We need to enact education reform, we need to adequately fund our education system, and we need to do it now in Washington State," McKenna said.
To him, that begins with moving teachers "away from a culture of seniority and sick time and toward a culture connected to accountability and achievement.” McKenna wants to link teacher pay to student achievement, pay teachers more if they work in challenging areas of the state, provide more mentoring to teachers, offer more early learning programs for the state's 3- and 4-year-olds, create more all day kindergarten opportunities, fund more after school programs, and extend the school year.
He wants more career skills centers (aka Technical Colleges), more STEM Schools (Science, Technology and Math Schools), and he wants all of this so that, for example, when a projected 15,000 Boeing engineers retire in the coming years, it's Washington students who are replacing them rather than out-of-state graduates (with the Washington students, as McKenna put it, "serving them coffee").
For higher education in general, McKenna called for getting back to the 50/50 split on student costs and investing more across the board.
“Education reform in this state is a lot like that boulder in Angry Birds," McKenna told the crowd. "It’s on top and it’s tipping, it’s tipping. We need a governor who’s going to enact legislation, and sign legislation, to get it across the line.”
Education reform, however, doesn't address the right-now need for jobs (and state services) for non-students who are currently unemployed.
To get the money needed to help them, McKenna called for privatizing the state's workers compensation system ("The state monopoly for workers compensation insurance will end when I’m governor"); lowering unemployment insurance payments ("This is an area where we cannot afford to be number one. This is an area where it’s perfectly fine to be average”); cleaning out government regulations like he needs to clean out his garage (though, somewhat paradoxically, he also called for government to get into the business of helping people figure out whether they owe B&O taxes); and lowering health care costs for businesses through tort reform and paying for outcomes rather than procedures (while he was speaking, a conservative-leaning U.S. Appeals Court upheld the Obama health care law, which McKenna has been trying to take apart through legal action).
“There’s something broken in our state," McKenna said, summing up the rationale for his candidacy.
What's not clear is whether his math for fixing what's broken makes any sense.
Though the crowd in Bellevue applauded all his I Believe the Children are Our Future talk ("Don’t tell me that every child in this state can’t learn! Every child can learn! Every child can succeed! And that is our mission!"), McKenna's "New Direction," when you place it on a ledger, looks a lot like the old direction that he's so often characterized as spend, spend, spend and hope for best.
UPDATE: Democratic State Party spokesperson Reesa Kossoff says in a statement:
"At a time when Washingtonians face some of the most difficult economic circumstances in our history, Rob McKenna rolled out his so called 'New Direction' for Washington by making tens of billions in campaign promises without offering one concrete proposal on how to pay for them. Washington needs a leader who is focused on creating jobs and revitalizing our economy, not making expensive, empty promises that fail to address reality.”
1
Has anyone proposed merit-pay for legislators? You can link their pay to governmental achievement.
4
@1 is right, but let's dispense with elections, too.
we need only put down on paper economic growth rates plus which party was in power, then give the white house to the party with the best historical record!
we need only put down on paper economic growth rates plus which party was in power, then give the white house to the party with the best historical record!
5
What the fuck does that mean?
All I'm imagining is that doctors will start refusing to treat anyone who's not already in perfect health. Don't we have that already with insurance companies refusing to insure people with minor chronic health problems?
paying for outcomes rather than procedures
What the fuck does that mean?
All I'm imagining is that doctors will start refusing to treat anyone who's not already in perfect health. Don't we have that already with insurance companies refusing to insure people with minor chronic health problems?
8
Merit pay for teachers makes no sense to me. I guess the idea is that teachers are motivated by dollars, but who thinks anyone chooses a teaching career for the money? I'm not saying increasing student performance shouldn't be incentivized, maybe it should or shouldn't, but choosing the proper incentive and the right measure of performance are really the key issues in that approach.
10
Promising to deliver much more while paying much less? That's a winning strategy. That's what voters want: a free lunch. Too bad it's a shit sandwich.
11
So we're supposed to attract better, more motivated teachers by cutting benefits? We are to improve services provided by state employees by forcing them from their jobs? Does logic play any part in this?
12
So link teacher pay to student achievement (pay less for teachers in shitty areas) but pay more for teachers in challenging areas (pay more for teachers in shitty areas). Is that a long way of saying do nothing?
16
How long have you been reporting on politics and you don't know how he plans on paying for all of that? It should be obvious because it's how Republicans have been promising to pay for government for decades. Cutting Waste and Fraud! By Republican calculations the budget is roughly 142% waste and fraud. If we just cut all of that waste and fraud we could pay for everything Republicans promise.
17
I guess he also been saying teachers can earn extra money by being tutors after school and over the summer.
18
Washington State has basically put itself up a tree and can't figure out how to back down.
It made the classic mistake of expecting unlimited growth and expansion only to watch it come to a grinding halt in 2007...now there is good evidence that population in places like Seattle is shrinking instead of growing.
The future does not look good for the middle class. High housing costs remain while job growth and salary increases are non-existent. At some point the Government will have to impose some type of high tax on people in the middle class as the big asset holders will never accept an asset tax.
That will make Washington a very, very unpleasant place to be for a middle class person trying to maximize his existence. So, that person will leave.
Washington State will end up being a wealthy enclave with lots of very menial types to cook the food and clean the streets.
It made the classic mistake of expecting unlimited growth and expansion only to watch it come to a grinding halt in 2007...now there is good evidence that population in places like Seattle is shrinking instead of growing.
The future does not look good for the middle class. High housing costs remain while job growth and salary increases are non-existent. At some point the Government will have to impose some type of high tax on people in the middle class as the big asset holders will never accept an asset tax.
That will make Washington a very, very unpleasant place to be for a middle class person trying to maximize his existence. So, that person will leave.
Washington State will end up being a wealthy enclave with lots of very menial types to cook the food and clean the streets.
19
"a culture of seniority and sick time"???
You might want to listen to that again, Eli. Sick time makes no sense. He said "seniority and seat time."
You might want to listen to that again, Eli. Sick time makes no sense. He said "seniority and seat time."
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