My article about I-900 in this week's The Stranger is up!
Ironically, I-900's most effective advocate could turn out to be the Democratic legislator who sponsored the bill that was meant to render I-900 moot, Rep. Mark Miloscia (Federal Way). Miloscia's been trying to pass performance-audit legislation since he joined the House in 1999.Read the whole thing.Miloscia learned the importance of audits as an Air Force captain during the Reagan years, when he audited defense contractors and helped root out such abuses as $500 toilet seats. Miloscia, who voted against all of Eyman's other initiatives, now says he'll vote for I-900, believing that the two regimes will coexist and complement each other nicely. He's not aware of any legislators who are publicly opposing I-900. Governor Christine Gregoire still prefers the legislature's bill that she signed into law, mainly because it allows her to appoint most of the members of a panel that determines what gets audited.
Other traditionally anti-Eyman liberals are supporting I-900, simply because it's good policy. The Olympian endorsed I-900, Skip Berger of the Seattle Weekly said good things about it, and Eyman expects more editorial boards to endorse I-900 in the coming days.
For more facts about I-900, read the Washington Policy Center's Guide to Initiative 900.
I also spoke with a member of what is apparently the only organized opposition to I-900, Bellevue Community College freshman Andrew Villeneuve. I didn't have enough space to include his comments in my column, but his arguments were pretty weak and he didn't convince me that the anti-I-900 movement is anything more than knee-jerk anti-Eymanism. His website is here, read his arguments and decide for yourself.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 06, 2005 04:44 PM | Email ThisThat said, I think I-900 is a bit... overkill. Originally, State Auditor Soontag's office was against it for detailed, good reasons, BTW.
They also say that:
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Q: Would the initiative (if it passed) supersede or overturn the bill passed by the Legislature – HB 1064 – and get rid of the citizen advisory board?
State Auditor’s Office: No.
Q: Would the state auditor be forced under Initiative 900 to try and audit every agency and program in the state, every year, including local governments?
State Auditor’s Office: No.
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Source
Sad really. Nice-sounding bill. I'll be probably one of those 10-percenters voting NO.
Posted by: David Irons Supporter on October 6, 2005 04:53 PMISN'T IT GREAT TO HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER HOW YOU PAY YOUR TAXES?.....CASH, CHECK, OR MONEY ORDER!!!
Posted by: TACOMA PHLASH on October 6, 2005 07:06 PMWell cry me a river. Guess what---the state right now has the so-called right to randomly audit any business they want, as part of their regular activity. In fact, they always do a certain amount of completely random audits every year, just for fun. The businesses have no ability to say no, if they feel it is a waste of their time. Why shouldn't government have to do the same? We'll probably find a much higher percentage of 'irregularities' in the government books than in the private sector.
Yes on I-900.
I-900 is such a no-brainer that even most democrats get it. Unless you're in the camp that thinks the ferry system isn't supposed to know how many cars take their boats each year, or believe that it makes sense to have a 4:1 administrator/case worker ratio at Child and Family Services.
Posted by: steve_dog on October 6, 2005 08:08 PMI taught at a WA State community college for less than 2 years, leaving due to plummeting enrollment (lost 2/3ds of their students over 2 years) and the fact that no one cared. But the real question was: as enrollments were falling, why did they hire two new faculty? "Because we always had this many faculty." Not because they currently needed that many instructors.
I asked, did anyone ever look at the enrollment data?
I was told, "No. No one ever looked at our enrollment." In fact, no one knew what their enrollment was in the past or present. Even what they thought they knew was wrong - they thought they'd had twice as many students as they actually ever had.
Now, back to I-900: Is this anyway to run an agency, organization or business?
Collecting data is part of the job description and is necessary to run an efficient and effective operation. Agencies and governments that say they will have to allocate scarce resources to develop information for audits are admitting that they have no accurate measures of how they are performing today. Which is sure sign that they need to be audited.
After my experience, I am strongly in favor of I-900. I wrote to State Auditor Brian Sonntag and detailed the inefficiencies I witnessed. His reply was that he does not currently have the legislative authority to audit the community colleges this way. Sounds like he needs I-900.
Posted by: Ed on October 6, 2005 09:37 PMI muse to find that not a single County vehicle I see has one rider, it seems that every county task takes at least two people per vehicle to perform.
That is of course assuming that that task ever does actually get performed!
Case in point:
I live on acreage (half now stolen by Ron Sims) next to a Public paved road system. The road culvert underneath the main road was plugged, causing all the runoff coming down a paved county road to run directly off onto my property. When I discovered the source of my increasingly wet grazing field, I called the county to unplug the aluminum culvert underneath their road. That seemed a simple enough request of a county employee.
Two county people came out and looked at the plugged culvert. They determined that since the water was now running off onto my property, and that there was one skunk cabbage plant growing in the vacinity of this runnoff, that they needed to call out the wetlands folks to make the final decision and get what they said would be a lengthy OK to unplug their culvert. It took two of them to make that couragous decision!
Needless to say I never saw any of them again! I heard (but never saw this) that it literally took one civilain person hand shoveling 5 shovels of dirt to unplug the culvert.
and
Oh by the way when harvesting skunk cabbage for Cole slaw ............it don't taste so good! :)
Posted by: GS on October 6, 2005 11:33 PMIt sounds to convinient that he suddenly realized that his bill was truely the garbage that it is.
Posted by: Balkstar on October 7, 2005 12:22 PM