The November/December issue of the BIAW newsletter included an interesting piece I needed to share...

The Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C., recently issued its biennial fiscal policy report card on the nation's governors. The report card's grading is based on 23 objective measures of fiscal performance. Governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades. Those who have increased spending and taxes the most receive the lowest grades.

Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire was one of just nine governors to receive an "F". Following is an excerpt from the report on Gregoire's leadership:

"Gregoire, one of the worst new governors in the nation, was elected in 2004 in one of the closest and most contentious elections in Washington history - a controversial Palm Beach-style recount made her winner of the gubernatorial race by only 129 votes.

Famous for being the lead negotiator in the $206 billion shakedown of cigarette companies known as the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement, Gregoire quickly took aim at state taxpayers upon entering office.

She's raised multiple taxes: the cigarette tax (by 42 percent), the gas tax (by 34 percent), and the state's liquor tax (by $1.33 a gallon). And she's resurrected the estate tax, too. Gregoire even helped the legislature overturn the law that required a supermajority to raise taxes in the future. All of this to fuel her spending binge, which expanded the general fund budget by more than 8 percent in fiscal 2006 alone. Gregoire was quick to propose new ways to spend the $1.6 billion budget surplus this year.

With a legislature controlled by her own party, perhaps the only check on Gregoire's big-government ambitions in years to come will be the usually feisty tax activists in the state."

This report merely mirrors what I've been saying since she got elected. She campaigned on a "no new statewide taxes" platform, mirroring the campaign promises of her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi. Thing was, though, that as soon as she moved into the Governor's Mansion, she and the Democrats (the majority party) in the legislature looked for loopholes in state tax policy in order to do exactly what she pledged she wouldn't do. And once the budget "surplus" was "discovered", she encouraged the Democrat-controlled legislature to push through a bill killing any bipartisan decision over increased taxes. At the end of her first year as governor, state spending and taxes increased. During her second year as governor, she publically warned her Democrat colleagues in the legislature not to "go overboard" with new spending. Yet, by the end of the legislative session, taxes reached an all-time high for the state, and spending increased again.

For those of you who may have thought she would keep her campaign word, all I have to say is this: to say "I told you so just isn't enough".