"State government's hiring outpaces population growth"
Office of Financial Management data show that the number of full-time workers employed by the state has increased by 16.3 percent since 1996, not counting local government employees and teachers.The EFF study is here. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 01, 2005 03:19 PM | Email ThisAnalysts at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a conservative public policy research group, say that comparatively, Washington's population grew 12.4 percent in the same period.
hmmmm, i wonder if there is any connection?
Posted by: dinesh on August 1, 2005 03:25 PM"Rather than continue to grow the size of government, state officials should limit spending to the core functions of government and prioritize all expenditures. If one area of government “needs” employment to grow, that increase should be offset by a decrease in a lower priority area."
hmmm, i guest the eff keeps it eyes on wa state and doesn't look up to d.c. where the federal govt seems to be a fiscal car wreck.
Bush's 2006 budget: a disgrace to all conservatives
Stephen Schwartz: Always Right
BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
"There is much room for criticism of the budget that President George W. Bush, DC '68, recently proposed for fiscal year 2006. Even Republicans such as Senators John Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), and Representatives John Spratt (D-S.C.) and John Peterson (R-Penn.), object to all or part of the list of 154 specific programs that will get reduced funding or be cut from the budget altogether. These cuts will reduce federal non-defense discretionary spending by one percent, and the deficit will remain enormous nonetheless. The debate over these programs, however, suggests that the federal govermment is not only fiscally irresponsible, but also overreaching in its authority.
What both the Bush administation and Congress have largely overlooked is the marginality—even the pettiness—of the program cuts being proposed. The cuts, put together, should save the federal government $15.3 billion. But the total budget calls for $2.6 trillion of spending, with a discretionary spending deficit of $427 billion. Worse still, President Bush is the first president since James Garfield—who was in office for less than a year—not to veto a single bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Budget Management (OMB), the deficit is down from 3.6 percent of the GDP to 3.5 percent and is projected to decline to 1.3 percent in five years. It's a bad sign, though, that fiscal conservatives have to use this figure, rather than actual balanced budgets, when they choose to defend the Bush administration.
Aside from the practical argument that tax cuts help the economy and the philosophical argument that all individuals—yes, even the very rich—ought to keep as much of their income as possible, tax cuts are designed to force the federal government to decrease in size. But this shrinking only happens when the elected officials who make the budget exercise self-restraint. As it is, the policy of cutting taxes has led to a bad situation and failed to forestall another. First, the $389 billion requested in this budget for discretionary spending on non-defense or homeland-security purposes—representing about 15 percent of the budget—is smaller than the total deficit. Furthermore, the CBO reports that, despite the tax cuts, the amount of government spending as a percentage of the GDP is near a 10-year high at almost 20 percent.
Tax revenue, in short, is currently insufficient to cover what the federal government thinks it needs to spend. Nevertheless, the government's ideas about "what it needs to spend" have remained expansive. Of the 99 programs slated for actual elimination, 59 have been on the president's chopping block before, have been funded by Congress, and have never even faced the threat of a veto. Since the federal government is, inevitably, better able to imagine ways to spend money than the economy is able to provide revenue, even raising taxes is not necessarily the best solution to this problem.
Rather, the solution is a paring back of federal activity at all levels. As conservatives often observe, much of what the federal government does now is without constitutional basis in the first place. One can find constitutional provision for departments of defense, justice, state, commerce, and the treasury without difficulty. But transportation? Education? Agriculture? Such departments, under the Tenth Amendment, oversee matters that often ought to receive government attention but are reserved for state authority.
State money for some such issues is better than federal money. The framers of the constitution believed, correctly, that regional differences matter and that central management of America's vastly different regions can lead to no good. Among exercising detailed authority, providing for local and individual freedom, and ruling a geographically large and diverse territory, no government can pick more than two. That is because different locations breed different populations, with different needs and characteristics, and should therefore be governed differently. To put the matter simply, Massachusetts and Texas, or Alaska and Hawaii, should have different laws. This fact is true even in the case of programs that probably do need some sort of government involvement. Take the Department of Education: It's not that there is no government interest in providing quality public education; rather, different states should be able to structure their education systems as they see fit, without the interference of a distant federal government that sets up large and expensive bureaucracies to oversee them and imposes standards and procedures that, by their very breadth, sacrifice their value.
The federal government should devolve many of its current responsibilities to the states, which are constitutionally empowered to fulfill them and may well do so better than Washington. But even if whole departments were abolished, there would still be a large deficit, and this difference will almost certainly be too large to be made up by economic growth, at least in the near future. The remaining deficit could only be met by reduced spending on defense and security, and by a determined reduction in our financial commitments to maintaining so much military power outside our borders. You will pardon me for thinking such belt-tightening unlikely.
One can't help but regret the poor discipline of elected representatives who insist on fighting for federal spending, not to mention the hypocrisy of those who do so after having supported the administration's policy of aggressively cutting taxes in its first term. The 2006 budget is discouraging to conservatives of all stripes, and better news is not forthcoming."
http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=4157
Posted by: dinesh on August 1, 2005 03:31 PMHire More, Pay em More, oh yeah, dont forget a new building or two.....Wasteful Goverment.....I wouldn't be a whistleblower either if I knew my 30% wage increase was at stake. Never get that kind of increase in Private Sector....Has the cost of living increased 30% over 9 years???
I need to go back to work and calm down!!!
Posted by: Chris on August 1, 2005 03:35 PMSenator Patty Murray is holding a secret "Community Meeting" on Wednesday, August 3rd, from 1:15-2:15 PM, in the Bellevue City Hall.
She doesn't want you there, which is all the more reason to go!
Go watch the Seattle feminist establishment beat the victim drums for more federal pork under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
Speaking of bloated government ....
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on August 1, 2005 03:37 PMDid I miss something here? Is the topic the Fed or state gov? Did anyone ever say that what ever the feds may be doing that it was good? What is your point?
If your only ability to rational over spending is that someone else is doing it too, you do not have an arguement. As far as the headline of this post, you are off topic.
So what do you think of the state's spending growth out pacing population for the past eleven years? (which (OT), by the way, about half that time was under Clinton)
Posted by: fred on August 1, 2005 03:39 PMNice to see you've found a streak of fiscal conservatism (snort), but this thread is about the growth of state government.
Try to stay on topic while those who actually voted for the party in power in DC deal with them on their own merits.
Posted by: jimg on August 1, 2005 03:40 PMAside from the fact that EFF is a state-focused organization, not national, the increases in spending at the state and national level are completely different. The difference is that the increases in spending at the national level have been the prices necessary to reform the system on many levels. WA has seen no such reform, and won't see any as long as we continue to have governors in the Lowry-Locke-Gregoire mold, and legislators like our current crop.
Posted by: Timothy on August 1, 2005 03:41 PMDid you forward that link to other interested organizations? Men's rights groups?
GOOD FIND!
Posted by: fred on August 1, 2005 03:47 PMI think this information is making the rounds, but I'm posting it anywhere I can think of. It's also on my blog www.sillyseattle.blogspot.com
If you can think of anywhere to post this information, please do so.
It would be great to see this secret event turned into a real "Community Meeting" in which Patty Murray has to answer some tought questions about why she is willing to crap on the Constitution in order to play gender politics!
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on August 1, 2005 04:05 PMdrawing criticism from conservatives who say it's time to reduce government services
The implication is always that if you cut staff you must also cut *services*, and that mean-old conservatives always want to cut *services*.
It's certainly true that conservatives want to cut unnecessary *services*, but you can't follow a straight line from pointing out that employment is growing to a desire to cut services.
It's like the constant implication from liberals that budget cuts mean a decrease in "essential" services, as opposed to increased efficiency in offering the same services. It never occurs to them that tax cuts will lead to increased efficiency on the essentials.
On the federal topic: government won't shrink on its own. You can't just ask for volunteers to give up their jobs and little fiefdoms.
There's no ability to profer citizens' initiatives at the federal level, but it's always been the role of the President to understand (and influence) the sense of the people and push the entrenched powers to respond. We call that "leadership."
You have to cut taxes first, in order to create the debate about what programs will be cut (or made more efficient).
The Bush tax cut, which has not been followed by enough spending cuts, is the federal equivalent of a tax-cut initiative. The giant fight over which programs will be cut (or which taxes will be raised again) is yet to come.
Men's Rights Groups? What are those? Is there such a thing?
On the topic at hand: It seems somewhat reasonable to spend more money to keep people in jail. I'd rather have them there and pay for it with money than have them out on the street and pay for it with my life. There's already too many criminals out on the street.
Posted by: JustSumGuy on August 1, 2005 05:00 PMAre you aware that your Constitutional rights have been erased for the past 10 years by VAWA?
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on August 1, 2005 05:24 PMThose are legitimate positions, and if that's what he believes he should say so. It is way too simple, and way too easy, to say that if staff are increasing in some area, the Legislature should simply decrease staff in another area to offset it. Decrease it where? Where would Mr. Mercier have proposed decreasing staff to offset the addition of 8,091 in Higher Education? DSHS? DSHS actually did not have an especially large increase over that time (less than 7%). The DSHS increase is further concentrated in a few programs: Children's Administration, Mental Health and Long-Term Care, where a variety of things, including caseload growth, federal mandates, lawsuit settlements, and legislation, drove FTE growth. In which of those programs would he have avoided staffing increases, and by what means? What policies would he have changed in order to reduce or eliminate staffing increases?
Mr. Mercier needs to get beyond the big, global statistics and sweeping generalities and and put some meat on the bones of this study, if he is to say something truly useful about state employment and state spending. As it is the EFF Highlighter induces a so what?
Your readers also should be aware that the Legislature does not specifically budget FTE staff. It appropriates money in the budget act for each agency, for each major program in certain agencies, and, through provisos conditioning appropriations, for specific activities as it may choose. Various changes in the number of FTE staff are then determined to result from the individual appropriations decisions made. So even if the Legislature were to take Mr. Mercier's suggestion and decrease FTEs in some agencies as it added them in others in order to maintain the total at some desired level, I'm not sure how it would do that, at least within the type of budget Washington has.
What those concerned about fiscal discipline should focus on is not how many FTE staff are employed by the state, but how much money the state spends, and what policies drive that spending. Some of the largest expenditures the state makes, after all, such as for K-12 education and Medical Assistance, involve relatively few state employees.
Posted by: jsa on August 1, 2005 07:30 PMSorry to disappoint you, but a 30% wage increase is pretty HUGE. This is a statewide, not KC or any other metropolis. If my income (private sector) rose 30%, I would be a really happy camper. Our secretary of 7 years left our company 3 years ago, for a STATE JOB with wages 15% above her current private sector wage.
She has approx 5 tasks to perform (that's it, no incentive to do more), and that is it. She has already had 4 incremental wage increases, and more benefits. She also brags of the potluck friday's, and every birthday party celebrated on "lunch hour", meaning the entire friday afternoon.
I guess maybe 30% increase isn't alot, when you EXPECT (already making) 20% over the normal private sector.
I can't help where you live, or where you CHOOSE to live, but as a taxpayer, I shouldn't have to pay for WASTE that our lawmakers continue to cost us taxpayers.
I maybe way off mark, but that is how I see it.
PS Why does it tax 6 DOT workers to repair a pothole?
Posted by: Chris on August 1, 2005 07:39 PMAnd they get to retire at 50, not 67 like the rest of us.
They retire(with a huge pension) and then go to work in the Private Sector, cause they are bored. They bitch and moan cause they have to actually work. Their expectations are triple of the life long private sector worker.
I could go on and on, but I stay away from, when hiring, people whom have worked for the goverment.
Posted by: Chris on August 1, 2005 09:24 PMFederal, state, county and city? What would a 10% growth in population cause to the actual growth of government at all levels?
Roughed out 2004 numbers off the Internet:
Federal - 1 Federal employe per 30 US residents (pop:300 million - 9 million+ employees).
Washington - 1 state employee per 6 state residents (pop:6 million - 105,000 employees).
King County - 1 county employee per 120 county residents (pop:1.8 million - 14,300 employees).
Seattle - 1 city employee per 60 city residents (pop:600,000 - 10,400 employees).
So for every 120 net new humans living in Seattle:
4 new federal employees.
20 new state employees.
1 new county employee.
2 new city employees.
That's 27 new government employees for every 120 new people in Seattle. If the United States grows by 10% over the next 10 years, and we assume that Washington, King County and Seattle all grow at the same rate, that's 60,000 new Seattle residents. At 27 new government jobs for every 120, that's 13,500 more government employees, or a "growth in government" of a whopping 22.5%.
My point here is that government should not be keeping pace with population growth, as the growth of all government will more than double the rate of population growth if a rate equal to population growth is acceptable. Government growth at population growth rates, at each level of government, is unsustainable!
Posted by: Mike on August 1, 2005 10:16 PMhttp://www.effwa.org/main/page.php?number=42
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=12
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=827
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=718
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=561
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=240
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=273
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=278
http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=280
With the goal of focusing attention on the fact that the FTEs need not automatically increase each year as was shown during the Lowry administration where FTEs actually decreased on a couple of occasions, we highlighted the increase versus the increase in the population government was serving.
As for where potential off-setting decreases could have been achieved for the 3,647 FTEs we discussed, for arguments sake, let’s assume state government is not operating at 100% efficiency and that there may be waste or redundancy in the budget. Based on that assumption let’s assume that between Gregoire’s GMAP reform, comprehensive and independent performance audits, and other efficiency endeavors, a mere two percent reduction in FTEs could be achieved without sacrificing the effective delivery of essential state services. While based on the state’s “stellar” audit reports over the past few years such a FTE efficiency achievement may appear unrealistic, if it could be achieved, that would result in a reduction of 2,135 FTEs (based on the 2005 totals of 106,754 FTEs reported by OFM).
Could such FTE efficiency savings be squeezed out of our government’s operations we would still be around 1,500 FTEs short of the mentioned 3,647. Perhaps the remaining 1,500 could come from a review of the state’s operations against a core functions of government matrix. Such a review may question whether or not it’s a core function of government to be involved in the sale and distribution of liquor (LCB – 1,024 FTEs), or a State Convention and Trade Center (161 FTEs), or operating a state printer (138 FTEs), or Historical Societies (89 FTEs), or a Horse Racing Commission (28 FTEs), or an Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation (28 FTEs) or various ethnic and gender commissions (23 FTEs), or an arts commission (17 FTEs) - http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=801
I appreciate Mr. Archer’s concern that the full budget picture may not have been available from our one page piece highlighting the growth of state employment. Though the point Mr. Archer makes about budget provisos being non-binding is also well taken, the fact remains that legislators hold the purse strings and have the authority to demand agencies restrict spending and employment growth to that which is approved. They could start exercising this authority by holding hearings on the numerous audit findings issued against state agencies and actually seeing to it that there be consequences for these violations of law. http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=805; http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=707; http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=206
If ensuring budget accountability and efficiency for the taxpayers requires the budget system be changed, now’s a good time to start the reforms. The buck ultimately stops with those who write, approve, and have oversight responsibility for the state’s budget – our elected state officials.
Posted by: jason on August 1, 2005 10:21 PMYour assumption is that the population of kids has gone up faster than the state's population to be able to rationalize a higher budget. Out of state students are "meant" to pay their way without WA resident’s subsidy. If Oly/CG didn't define illegal immigrants as residents (???) it would reduce imbalance.
Posted by: fred on August 2, 2005 09:20 AMMike,
That is one state employee for every 60 residents (NOT 6) and if you back the Higher Ed employees out of it, it would be a little above 1 to 100 residents. Why back them out, you didn't include any other education employees in your numbers. And if you use Seattle SD, don't forget that there are almost NO school kids in Seattle.
Jason,
By pulling out the Corrections and Hi Ed increases from your 9 year growth, I find that 79% of the growth came from these two areas. All the rest of the state employment grew by 6.6%, about half the population rate of growth.
I also comopared the enrollments and prison pop's. Corrections employment grew about the same as its clientele. The Hi Ed employment grew faster than enrollment (see "2005 WA State Hi ED Trends and Highlights" at the OFM website.) It's possible some of the employee growth has to do with the capital facilities building for the 30,000 more students. But I think that you would have a stronger case against Hi Ed growth (24.4%) vs. enrollment (16.4%) than 6.6% FTE's vs 12.4% pop.
This report also shows that the ratio of degrees to FTE's has returned to earlier levels now that the bloom is off the IPO bubbles. College enrollment doesn't track 18-22 year olds very well. The average at most of our CC's is at or above 30 years of age.
Posted by: Gary on August 2, 2005 01:47 PMGood point about higher ed FTE growth. That is one area of the budget (along with DSHS and Transportation) that cries out for a performance audit. Not surprisingly, higher ed fought to have any performance audits conducted restricted. Perhaps if I-900 passes the State Auditor will be free to look into these FTE increases and see if savings can be identified.