That's how the P-I describes the diagnosis of Olympia on the public's current mood. The article goes on to note the disagreement between those that think there is a general anti-tax mood versus those that believe voters are merely anxious and have some concerns with specific issues.
Either way, I suspect one reason the Legislature in specific was so quick to hop on board the special session is that the messages they've been hearing from their constituents on such topics is more clear than any debate between pundits and experts on the matter.
Your thoughts?
Posted by Eric Earling at November 26, 2007 07:59 AM | Email ThisConcerning 960, a college professor said "It (won) with around 51 percent (approval). It wasn't a landslide."
Opponents spent $1.3 million trying to convince voters to reject 960 which made it tougher to raise taxes. We spent $0 - not a single TV ad, radio ad, campaign sign, or bumper sticker. And yet despite being radically outspent, 960 won by a wide enough spread that even King County elections couldn't print up enough 'no' ballots to offset our margin of victory. That's nothing short of remarkable.
Proponents of Prop 1's massive tax increase spent $4 million, opponents spent less than a million, and yet it crashed and burned in the three most liberal counties in the state.
Proponents of 4204 (simple majority for property tax increases) spent between 3 and 4 million, faced absolutely no organized opposition, and yet barely squeaked out a victory.
In 2005, voters approved I-900 requiring the state auditor to recommend ways to spend existing tax revenue more effectively rather than government raising taxes - passed with 56% support with a 'yes' campaign consisting of a $150 gorilla costume.
In 2004, proponents of I-884 (sales tax increase for education) spent between 2 and 3 million, faced a $15,000 opposition campaign, and got trounced (40% yes, 60% no).
In 2003, Locke and Rossi close a $2.7 billion budget deficit without raising taxes.
In 2002, opponents of I-776 ($30 tabs) radically outspent us and the initiative passed by a comfortable margin.
In 2002, proponents of Ref 51 ($8 billion tax hike) spent millions, opponents spent little, and voters decimated it at the polls.
In 2001, opponents of I-747 (1% cap on property tax increases) spent millions and it passed by the widest margin (58-42%) of any initiative we've ever done.
In 2000, opponents of I-722 (2% cap on property tax increases) spent millions and it was approved by a huge margin in a presidential year (55% yes, 45% no).
In 1999, opponents of I-695 ($30 tabs/voter approval for tax and fee increases) spent $2 million against it, we spent less than $50,000 to get 514,000 voter signatures, 2nd highest number in state history, and it passed by a whopping 56% yes vote.
Anyone who doesn't see a pattern of voters saying 'no' to higher taxes and demanding that government make due with existing revenues is in massive denial.
State and local goverments impose and collect over $50 billion every year. Even without tax hikes, that amount increases. If prioritized, that's more than enough.
Ah, such wonderful leadership.
That is the biggest damn red herring I hear over and over.
Want some specific areas??
1) How about not buying 100K automated toilets and 10 million maintenance for those automated crackhouse/toilets? Savings: over $10 million.
2) How about not delcaring funding of sports stadiums and "emergency". Savings 50 million +
3) When the taxpayers vote for gas tax increases to fix the viaduct how about that be the first priority and not a bike path in Moses Lake?
There are many many more specifics where government wastes money like a drunken sailor. So the red herring of "no one can name me a program to cut" is easily disproven.
Another four years of Democrat control will result in Washington becoming the highest taxed and most regulated state in the US. That is bad for everyone.
Posted by: Paddy on November 26, 2007 12:14 PMOur form of government is inherently biased towards bigger gov't and higher taxes than what the voters would choose.
The spending disparity gives a kind of rough index of this bias.
Posted by: russell garrard on November 26, 2007 12:18 PMThe legislators in this special session should take that taxing power away from the counties
The dem's have been running this state for how long!
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on November 26, 2007 12:37 PMAt industry leaders in manufacturing the year over year efficiencies asked for are often closer to 12%. (With one stock I hold they ask for 17% increase every year. This stock has gone from $40 a share to 83 in 18 months.))
This kind of corporate belt-tightening happens just about all the time, and it's remarkable how often the middle management in these organizations can find that 4 or 5% or 10 o4 12% savings. The "$1,000 here" and "$1,000 there" really adds up quick if you have people focused on it in order to save their jobs.
In government, it seems the reverse is true. Budgets go up automatically year to year and no departmental efficiencies are expected. It's foolish and wasteful. It rewards the inefficient.
It's time government caught up with private industry. Computer systems, email, web-meetings, etc. are all bringing huge efficiencies to business. Why can't government seem to make the leap?
PBJ,
Your first item I believe is a city or county item, not a state budget item, but in respect of government, I would say it meets a big ticket item. However, the only savings from this point would be the maintenance savings, which one would have to reduce the savings by expenditures to remove the toilets, and if one replaces with normal toilets, then expenditures to maintain those toilets.
The sports stadium issue is after the fact now. The only thing that can be done is to stop future boondoggles (i.e., public funding for Sonics, public funding for NASCAR track). This is what Rossi should go on record as supporting (i.e., that he won't support public funding for these two boondoggles). It doesn't however save any current money because no current money is being expended.
Since there is some confusion, let me state groundrules, that I consider:
1. The idea must be major program dollars (i.e., above $1M, or at least $100K to start with). Otherwise, one is getting into the minutia of budget line items too much. To make a difference at the state level, you need to whack out unneeded or unnecessary programs or major expenditures.
2. The idea must reduce expenditures, or the difference between expenditure reduction and revenue reduction must amount to major dollars (see #1). The idea is to get our current dollars working better for us, not to cut both dollars and their associated expenditures.
3. Forget about "sunk" costs. Expenditures already spent or legally committed, can't be retrieved. The latter (legally committed) could potentially be retrieved, but with a minimum of major penalty or would require major vote to negate the legal collection (e.g., stopping existing sales tax and excise tax within RTID to pay that pays for exisiting, committed ST projects). I am talking about current expenditures.
4. Don't include potential future expenditures that may or may not happen. If it isn't in the current state's budget plan, then it currently isn't a planned expenditure. The key here is to elect officials that will tow the line to new programs/major expenditures that don't demonstrate positive economic benefits for the state.
2. Require Tolls and Private/Public partnership on all Transportation projects over $500M. Use the Narrows Bridge as an example. This would pay for 520, for the Viaduct, and other major transportation projects, and free up Transportation dollars to pay for the other smaller projects (e.g., interchange improvements, etc.). There is a least $2-5B in the current Transportation budget that could be redirected to pay for other transportation projects. If the Narrows bridge can pay for itself through user tolls, then 520 and the Viaduct, sure can also.
Posted by: tc on November 26, 2007 12:51 PMMore money for the State? How about allowing NON-TRIBAL gaming with slots and table games and taxing it? Other states have compensation from Tribal Casinos to the tune of approximately $400 million a year, why not here?
Get the State out of the Booze Business, open Sunday package sales and let the free market employ the sales clerks and pay the rents for liqour stores. Enhanced revenues, fewer State employees.
Posted by: Smokie on November 26, 2007 12:57 PMOne prime example is the national change in the handling of welfare. The entrenched doom and gloomers predicted disasters that never occured. Efficacy and accountability are foreign concepts to them. The only way the way governmental entities will behave themselves is by forcing them to.
Posted by: scott158 on November 26, 2007 12:59 PMWhat Russell, or Tim, refuse to acknowledge is that 60% or more of the people will automatically select an option that says "Pay Less Tax" without any understanding of any implication whatsoever.
Any money spent to educate the public is just to try (and often fail) to level the playing field between the knee-jerk "YES to less taxes, regardless" and the real trade-offs at hand.
If Eyman offered a "Vote YES to pay NO tax, he'd probably see it passed unless a significant effort was spent to educate folks what paying no tax would mean."
Posted by: Bill Anderson on November 26, 2007 01:03 PMThe legislature ignores him. The governor ignores him. Frequently, the agencies he's auditing ignore him.
Here's a place to start the identification of the millions of dollars wasted each year by our Democratically-controlled government:
http://www.sao.wa.gov/Reports/Accountability/Index.htm
Now then, can we get past the bizarre notion that this state's government doesn't criminally waste our money?
Thanks.
Posted by: Hinton on November 26, 2007 01:17 PMAll an adult has to do is go through each state Department budget, line by line, and my guess is 1/3 of all state spending would be eliminated on the FIRST PASS as utterly useless wastes of money..
I90 squirrel bridges......uh huh...thump thump
WA state patrol crime lab...probably repairs radar guns mostly
add another 2 or 3 thousand easily found items...
The voters are absolute MORONS for not wanting to hand ALL their money over to the government. They should feel PRIVILEGED and hand it over with a smile. We'll never have a level playing field until they have all been RE-EDUCATED to think more like you do.
[/sarcasm]
Real change in an organization comes from creating a dynamic that hunts for and eliminates waste on a micro level - not just a macro level.
Name the government department and a 1% savings in their operating budget could save a lot of money.
It's all about:
- Changing the way a procurement process works so that suppliers are pushed to deliver "the same" services for less each year. (Which makes them find ways to become more efficient.)
- Questioning whether employees really need to attend that annual offsite meeting. (And never mind that they went last year.) I can't tell you how many hotels I've stayed in on business where a conference room has been overflowing with education administrators or human services people. Doesn't government have conference rooms already?
- Whenever I go to a tradeshow in Seattle, it seems that government entities there always have the best giveaways. (The plastic firemans hats for the kids, baby bibs, etc.) I took my family to a dam tour in the mountains this summer and we all walked away with a couple of bucks worth of pens each. Where is the ROI from that?
A few thousand here, a few thousand there. It all adds up. You just need to have an organization that is pushed to do it.
It doesn't need to be about chopping departments and initiatives, it needs to be about eliminating what no longer works efficiently. Private companies build their business this way. That's the way we "think" and it's how we get enough money to do the next great thing.
Why can't state and local governments develop the same way of thinking?
This is why government should ONLY do what it's core mission is: defending our equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property. Government must be limited because it is almost always a very inefficient way to get anything done.
Police, National Defence, Courts. Legislative, Executive, Judicial. Stick to the limitations of the State and Federal Constitutions.
As government gains ground, liberty tends to yeild.
Here is a specific area to cut: education. This is the biggest line-item in the state budget!
Private schools do it better, right?
Let's privatize all the schools, and then give a taxpayer funded voucher ONLY to the bottom 20% of income and asset classes. Have a means-tested voucher.
Then we would be funding the education of 20% of the students, instead of 90% statewide! We could slash property taxes by about 50%! Rents would go down for the poor as a result!
Competition would improve school quality. Schools could be run as non-profits by local boards. Some would be for-profit. The teachers' union would be destroyed. Tiny schools would sprout up serving local communities and giving parents a huge diversity of choice. Imagine having the same diversity and quality in schooling as we have in restaurants in Seattle! Private accreditation organizations would ensure high quality. Private charities would supplement the state vouchers for the poor.
And who trusts the government with the power to indoctrinate our kids in the government monopoly school system? Do you want them taught that government can only be good? That is what mostly liberal social studies teachers are teaching them. The Soviets thought state-run schooling was the way to go...
Privatize the schools. State budget problem solved, taxes slashed, schools fixed.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 26, 2007 02:10 PMJust some questionable items, in my viewpoint. I am sure others would have different questionable items.
Posted by: tc on November 26, 2007 02:15 PMHow about:
1- Remove the requirement that bidders on state funded projects must pay the prevailing union wage to workers. I suspect this one act alone would reduce transportation spending by billions per year.
2- Remove the 1% for art requirement for state funded projects. I don't think the state needs to be in the business of subsidising out of work artists. Again, we are talking 10's of millions each year. How much was spent for the Brightwater plant?
3- Remove the bike lane from the proposed 520 bridge. Put a Metro stop on each end of the bridge and if a bicyclist wants to cross, he/she puts the bike on the rack on the front of the bus and crosses on the bus - free. Heck, if we paid Metro $1000 per bicycle passenger per trip we would still be millions ahead.
Posted by: Jay on November 26, 2007 02:18 PMAnd stinky boy W. has driven the federal budget up >50% in a single administration.
Posted by: WVH on November 26, 2007 02:22 PMBruce,
What you are talking about would be a many year change to implement. What would be implementable would be: (1) question whether state government should be funding research or leave this to private business, (2) creation of a voucher system (I would open up to all students, irrespective of income level, but cap at $6000, which is about $1500 less per student than current student learning costs, e.g., state average for direct learning costs is approximately $7,500), but also limit vouchers to schools willing to meet state guidelines (no fly-by-night diploma mill enterprises like popping up in Arizona), and (3) implement a merit pay system for teachers that rewards teachers for meeting certain continual learning, certification requirements, and 360 degree review requirements (students, parents, peer teachers, and principals) set to state-wide teaching standards. Salary shouldn't be based on longevity alone. Teachers that don't meet continue improvement/ratings benchmarks would be terminated.
tc @ 36, that is why we need to start this reform today. Let's privatize 10% of the schools each year. Just turn them over to their schoolboards. Make the current school board members the trustees. Instruct them to spin-off schools one at a time to newly-created local boards. Parents and local business leaders would tend to apply, I think. It'll take ten years, but that is cool. Then start the voucher program with the bottom 5% and creep up to 20% as the schools are privatized.
Giving all students vouchers is welfare for the rich and middle class. It is unecessary, and teaches people that all benefits tend to flow from government. It perpetuates a psychology of welfare and dependency and entitlement. It is also unfair to charge the childless for the education of others. Bad enough just to charge them for the poor, much less the rich and middle class. Let the childless give to private tuition charities if they like, and let them take that off their federal income taxes.
Why not make the voucher $10K? That is what it costs to educate a student in our government school system. It exceeds the average private school tuition in the state! Private charities could make up the difference if a really smart, poor student got in to Lakeside. I hear most of their students get financial aid from the school as it is!
I'll compromise on the state certification program, though I think private accreditation boards as we have with colleges and universities would be better. I'd be OK if all the state did was investigate and DEcertify the bad ones. The presumption would be that schools would qualify, unless due process denied it to them. Innocent until proven guilty or substandard. Then you couldn't get the vouchers. But decertified schools could still run as long as they did not accept vouchers.
Merit pay should be totally up to the individual schools. Managing this kind of thing centrally, or forcing it on all schools via state law is the kind of thing that got us in to the poor school quality mess in the first place.
Teacher standards should also be managed mostly by the accreditation organizations, much like it is done at the University level. State-run standards are too bureaucratic, and are part of the problem.
Look, Lakeside Academy, the best private school in Seattle, hires uncredentialed teachers. Need I say more?
To a large extent, government has created this problem. As a general rule, we need less of it, not more.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 26, 2007 03:03 PMHow about a proposotion requiring ZERO based budgeting for all state/county/city budgets?
Posted by: Howabout???? on November 26, 2007 03:11 PMA good look at travel and entertainment budgets - especially overnight travel and large events, tradeshow/community outreach programs that have outlived their usefulness, and other such items would be all it takes.
Auditing company cars, telephone usage, etc. would also net 5% or better in those areas. (It's not a case of honesty - it's a case of people tightening up their reports when they know they are being watched.)
If that isn't enough, a good look at pr consultants, consultant in general, etc. would surely put each government agency over the top.
Public and private companies do this kind of thing every year. Government agencies never do it. There's plenty of fat there to cut.
The root of state governments problem right now is that we as taxpayers hear $5 Billion to do this and $5 billion to do that. Simple roadwork in our neighborhood costs millions. (It says so right there on the signs.) We just don't believe that it should cost that much because we know that the state government has no current drive to be more efficient.
As educated voters, we've watched private industry build stadiums, huge casinos in Vegas, skyscapers in Manhattan, and even huge gated communities with their own sewage, lights, roads, playgrounds and other amenities for small fractions of that amount of money.
I know it sounds cynical, but I was discussing this with some folks I work with one night and we had unanimous agreement that the Disney company could re-build the 520 bridge for significantly less than what our state is quoting. That's a pretty amazing statement given that the only thing I know that's usually more inefficient and bloated than state government is the entertainment industry.
(I'd be interested in what other readers here think.)
It sounds like you work in government, so I'll apologize about comparing what you do to the work of an animated mouse, but here's a real suggestion.
1) Come to taxpayers next election with a series of proposals on how to cut 5% out of the cost of government through cost cutting, cuts to media relations programs, etc.
2) Visually and vocally cut out the stupid projects like the barn history project or at least put them in packages and let us voters vote on them instead. (I mean really, you let us vote on budgets for crime labs, but not for some of this still stuff?)
3) Then do it again every year for a few years.
Once taxpayers know that you've learned how to make government more efficient instead of more bloated, we might be more inclined to support additional tax increases.
Posted by: johnny on November 26, 2007 05:13 PMCase in Point
Even under the so called 1% or 2% limit, my property taxes went up $564 dollars last year alone, to the tune of a 13% increase in one year.
This is BS, and their answer will be to take it away or lone it to you with interest, so they can take it all when you die.
http://www.dis.wa.gov/wheelerpressrelease.pdf
and this:
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/heritage/
People need to wake up!!
On the way back home, I came up 101, through Raymond. Interestingly, the biggest, newest building was the DSHS building. About a block away from the old Safeway which is now the County records annex. And there was another open grocery store two blocks away, plenty large for DSHS.
Why build a new multi-million dollar building right on the bayfront? Why not buy - or lease - a good-enough building just two blocks away and save several million?
It's the government's idea that they "have to have the best" that is the problem. Government doesn't need to keep up with Boeing or Microsoft - government should make do like most small to midsize businesses...
Posted by: Edmonds Dan on November 26, 2007 08:12 PMBut it is Election season isn't it!
Posted by: GS on November 26, 2007 09:10 PMYou are starting to show your head in the sand mentality.
Wake up and stop posting dumb responses or I will pay more attention to your posts and light you up.
Time to change your economic thinking and how it relates to the spending of my taxes.
Imagine what Lakeside would cost if it were in Gig Harbor. The property taxes they pay alone must be enormous. Now if Lakeside was a public school and they needed to expand, well that just falls under eminent domain......
First the practical: The government tends to be much worse than the private sector at picking which kinds of research projects will pay out in terms of products delivered to the market. Many more of the government research grants go to pointless research that just keeps academics in their ivory towers. I used to teach at WWU (9 years in the business school) and I know that the easiest grants to get based on clever or deceptive applications were the government grants. Private sector grants tended to go to the really promising research. Private organizations, whether for profit or not for profit tend to pick better research to fund, and monitor that research more closely.
Next, the moral arguments. Who tends to benefit from scientific research apart from the researchers? Businesses who sell products based on the research, and customers who buy the products. But these are both special interests. Most research goes in to expensive products that the poor can not afford. It amounts to corporate welfare, or reverse Robin-Hood subsidies to the rich.
Think about Gregoire and Cantwell's Boeing Aerospace Research Center at UW? Corporate welfare, or welfare to those who can afford to fly. This should be privately funded.
And exactly where in the federal or state Constitutions, that legislators swore an oath to uphold, is there authorization to spend the taxpayers' money on scientific research? And don't give me that "general welfare clause" stuff. That is a LIMITATION on governmennt power, not a blank check to fund anything. It is a prohibition to act for the welfare of special interests.
No, I say we should eliminate all taxpayer funding for scientific research, and cut taxes proportionately. This will allow the economy to grow, create more rich people, and actually result in MORE money being donated through private charities for research that is more likely to actually result in products that help people. The economic growth would help employment and wages of the poor.
The only people who are hurt by this policy, are the politicians who will no longer be able to grant research money in exchange for campaign finance contributions. Power corrupts, and the power to grant research subsidies corrupts our politicians every year.
I say get the rich Ivory tower academics and the big corporations off the dole.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 26, 2007 09:17 PMI saw a bumperstick that was purchased obviously from a national website that said "If you don't like what is going on, vote Democrat!"
I say national website because "If you don't like what is going on locally, DON'T VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!!"
If you want change, polarize your neighbors and get them voting!!! Start the fire now.
Posted by: Chris on November 26, 2007 09:18 PMI saw a bumperstick that was purchased obviously from a national website that said "If you don't like what is going on, vote Democrat!"
I say national website because "If you don't like what is going on locally, DON'T VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!!"
If you want change, polarize your neighbors and get them voting!!! Start the fire now.
Posted by: Chris on November 26, 2007 09:18 PMI saw a bumperstick that was purchased obviously from a national website that said "If you don't like what is going on, vote Democrat!"
I say national website because "If you don't like what is going on locally, DON'T VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!!"
If you want change, polarize your neighbors and get them voting!!! Start the fire now.
Posted by: Chris on November 26, 2007 09:18 PMIt doesn't matter. You see, the thinking you are using assumes that all money is public money, and some central government authority is allocating it according to some efficiency algorythm. But that is not how the market works, and Lakeside is part of the free market, even though it is a non-profit org.
From the centrally-controlled perspective, one asks if this is the most efficient use of public resources. The problem is that central controllers never have the information needed to allocate resources efficiently. The free market does, but it is distributed in a million places, close to where the rubber meets the road. This is why free markets almost always allocate resources more efficiently than governments ever can. This is Hayek, from "The Road to Serfdom." I'll send you a summary if you e-mail me.
Also, money spent is not well correlated with academic outcomes, as your comparision to Gig Harbor HS suggests. Instead, it is better correlated with school size (smaller schools tend to have better outcomes) and teacher quality. Because government schools are all but unable to fire bad teachers, overall teacher quality is lower. Private schools are not hamstrung by union rules, and can fire bad ones, or those who have burned out. Also, teacher passion is a key determinant in teacher quality, NOT teacher certification. Teacher passion only works when teachers are allowed freedom to be creative. Big schools and State bureaucracy (like EALR's and WASL) tend to crush teacher creativity and passion. Students are not inspired by teachers who lack passion.
Private schools can pay LESS, and get better teachers, because they offer teachers freedom. Good teachers are only motivated secondarily by money (duh, otherwise they would get other jobs!), but bad teachers tend to be MORE motivated by money, so raising government school teacher pay does not increase teacher quality.
Overall, on average, student outcomes would be improved by going to a privatized school system, with needs-based vouchers for the poor only. Increasing private school and homeschool enrollment is just the free market's way of telling you that.
The government school system can not be reformed from within. It can only be reformed through competition from without. You have the private schools to thank for that. That is why when I graduate from SU's Masters in Teaching program in June of '08, I will teach Math and Physics at a private high school. I will never again teach in a government school. I see it as my moral duty.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 26, 2007 09:36 PM34. I am still waiting for (1) ONE of you fine fellows to say something about the $1.4T Iraq Invasion/Occupation/Nation building expense. It's probably more than that by far, but let's use that number first.
And stinky boy W. has driven the federal budget up >50% in a single administration.
Posted by WVH at November 26, 2007 02:22 PM
Thanks for the save Brucie, I understand why you like imposters better.
We need a thorough review of both state spending and state revenue and a review of state programs.
I don't know how close State Auditor Sontag is to retirement. But someone of his caliber should lead the review and propose sunseting some programs and making others more efficient. I wonder if Craig's List can get me a more intelligent cyberstalker?
You have a very low opinion of the intelligence of voters don't you? Your multimillion education is really "reeducation".
Do you have kids Bill? If you give your kid $20 for lunch every week and he spends it at the video arcade then comes back to you asking for another $20 for lunch money, do you just hand over another $20 to him?
Posted by: pbj on November 27, 2007 04:43 AMChris,
I am not understanding your post (#49). FYI, the median price of homes in GH area is around $380-400K, with a lot of waterfront with $1M plus homes. It is the "rich" suburb of Tacoma, along with UP, Fircrest, and Browns Point. My point was that public schools can provide a top-notch education at a lot less costs. Bruce raised the point of Lakeside as a excellent private school, which I no doubt believe. My point however is that it is excellent for two factors: (1) amount of money spent on education, and (2) income level of families that send their kids to the school. With GHHS, part of the reason, I believe for higher than average test scores, is the income level of the community. At the high school, only 3% of the students are on the Free Lunch program. This is in stark contrast to say Foss in Tacoma, where 37% of the students are on the Free Lunch program.
Bruce,
Thanks for responding. I was leaning to stating that government funding of research wasn't a necessary function of education. Your arguments make good sense in this regard.
Their lunacy tommorrow, to loan poor people 1/4 of the taxbill on their home, payable way later on, with massive 7% interest, is like getting a Government sponsored Visa card. Most will misuse the credit and the government will get a winfall, when the house is lost to the creditor, and the creditors will get stuck holding the bag when the Government reaches in with their big damn leagal paws.
The lunacy and tax happiness of this bunch just absolutely nothing short of theft! Continued Theft!
They gotta go bye bye
Posted by: GS on November 27, 2007 07:03 PMNo Credit check required, no financial solvency in you decreasing home loan value necessary, as the queen will now loan you 25% of your masiive property tax load each and every year until you default on your loan!
And worry not, the taxpayers will pick up your default debt.
It can't get any better than that!
So Sign up NOW! For your free (No questions asked) Gregoire & Washington State Visa Card!
Because more Debt and Default is just what the poorest homeowners of this state need!
Just Ask Gregoire, the Solutions are abounding!