Transparency and Why WA Unemployment Rate Jumps to 9.5 Percent
March 16, 2010
Universal criticism of the Washington State Legislature’s failure to be transparent is validated once again as the state’s unemployment rate continues to climb – now at 9.5 percent.
The increase stems from another 8,300 lost jobs, including 3,200 in construction and 2,100 in business services.
The timing couldn’t be more symbolic during this national Sunshine Week. The unemployment rate dovetails with the declining transparency at the Washington State Legislature. It’s in a special session to finalize the state budget with seemingly countless tax increases following years of over-spending.
If it weren’t for the watchdog efforts of people like Jason Mercier, Washingtonians would be in the dark regarding the chicanery of the Legislature. Lawmakers have refused to implement efficiencies at the expense of a suffering electorate and business community. They’ve passed ghost tax bills and made many decisions in private, but have not accomplished anything to improve the state’s economy. Mr. Mercier, who is the director of the Center for Government Reform for the Washington Policy Center, has issued countless updates from Olympia.
As a result of the secrecy in passing numerous unnecessary tax increases and other dubious legislation, newspapers across the state are clamoring for good, open government in Washington state.
Here’s a sample:
A bad example of legislative ‘transparency’, Olympian
“In the waning days of the regular legislative session, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, a Democrat from Spokane, claimed the Legislature is much more transparent than it was when she entered the Legislature. Brown is wrong . . .”
Sunshine and Clouds in Olympia, Kitsap Sun
“The bad news is that public access to information and hearings about legislation has been … challenging. There’s been a flurry of ‘title-only’ bills introduced and set for hearings, sometimes on short notice, and with no timely public information on their content. Members of the public deserve better than that — and if they want to get it, they’d better say so this fall to those who seek to represent them in the Legislature.”
It’s National Sunshine Week, but state’s transparency forecast remains cloudy, Longview Daily News
“Shutting down the Sunshine Committee less than three years after it was formed is as difficult to justify as that legislative exemption from public disclosure. It proved too much for legislators to pull off in the light of day. The Sunshine Committee was taken off the bill’s termination list — less than a week ago. Sadly, that remains this legislative session’s single accomplishment on behalf of government transparency.“
State government clings to double standard, News Tribune
“Is it any wonder that city and county officials clamor for relief from open meetings and records laws when they see their counterparts in state government behave as they do? State officials profess a belief in public disclosure. They’re just not sure it always applies to them. Lawmakers in particular hold themselves apart from the state’s sunshine laws. They caucus in secret for any reason and insist that their correspondence is somehow constitutionally protected from public dissemination. They also apparently reserve the right to skip public process in the interests of expediency.”
Public input? Who cares?, Everett Herald
“With increasing audacity, key state legislators are taking control from the people and seizing it for themselves. Amid the difficult process of closing a $2.8 billion budget shortfall, they’ve skirted, waived or ignored the public’s right to know what they’re up to and comment on it.”
And there others we can cite.
Meantime, Mr. Mercier offers some excellent solutions for transparency and the Legislature’s practice of passing ghost tax bills.
“Add the preamble of the state’s public records act to Article 1,” he writes. This would help re-enforce this transparency intent for any wayward court.” (See the preamble about the voters’ sovereignty.)
“Add a new section to Article 2 which would require 72-hour public notification before any bill could receive a public hearing, he adds. “While the requirement currently exists in legislative rules, it is often waived.”
Amend Article 2, Section 19 to prohibit title only bills. No public hearing or vote should occur on a “ghost bill.”
Amend Article 2, Section 22 to prohibit votes on final passage until the final version of the bill to be approved has been publicly available for 24-hours.”
He points out it would not be a stretch for the Legislature to be transparent and give the voters adequate notice before passing bills that affect their livelihoods.
“Florida’s Constitution (Article 3, Section 19) requires a 72-hour public review period for appropriations bills before they can be voted on,” Mr. Mercier explains. “Hawaii’s Constitution (Article 3, Section 15) requires a 48-hour review period before any bill can be voted on for final passage.”
Is transparency too much to ask? No. So, why don’t we tell lawmakers how we feel? Otherwise, the unemployment rate and the economic climate will remain unnecessarily unacceptable. Not to mention the theft of Washingtonians’ economic and political freedoms.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a link from Enterprise Washington to find your legislators’ phone number and email address.
The Link – Local TV Journalism, Bad Government Policy and Poor Economy
Updated May 22, 2010 11:00 a.m.
Do you ever wonder why the economic climate is unhealthy? Why the unemployment rate is so high? Or why government policies aren’t conducive to economic growth and the creation of jobs?
In essence, the culprits are government, business greed and inadequate coverage from local broadcast journalism.
Government is culpable because of its political theatrics – failure to set realistic priorities and implementation of unnecessary programs – an immature approach to budgeting.
Business greed led to the financial-sector collapse. That includes the behavior of Wall Street, disingenuous mortgage underwriting, the abrupt terminations of credit lines to businesses, and the predatory practices of credit card companies charging huge interest rates and fees for to small businesses and consumers for bogus reasons.
The federal government has ostensibly tried to correct the problems, but failed. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is trying to do something about risky derivative trading and lending money to small businesses. The GOP claims to want to do something for small business. The credit card legislation hasn’t corrected all the injustices nor has it helped the majority of small businesses and consumers suffering from tepid or low credit scores as a result of the predatory practices.
The tax incentives to create jobs aren’t working because an economic engine, small business, isn’t in a position to do so. Either the businesses still have poor credit or they can’t afford to risk hiring workers. The incentives are just a pittance compared to the costs of a yearly salary, benefits and the risks of having to layoff newly hired workers. Unemployment insurance is too high for them, as it is.
And small business loans aren’t available to credit-challenged businesses. Even if they could get loans, it would only exacerbate the situation because the businesses aren’t making enough money to pay the loans back. They have too few customers. Consumers can’t afford to buy nor do they have the credit to do so.
Healthcare is a related issue. Polls show Americans opposed the efforts of President Obama and the Democrats. But the public officials didn’t listen.
So where does that leave us regarding my premise about the connection – local TV news coverage, dysfunctional government and the economic downturn? Can we agree about the harmful effects of the Great Recession? Great.
How about the power of television? A little later I’ll point out how the power of TV is not being used and why is isn’t relevant.
That leaves the other two – news coverage and more analysis of government policy.
First, let’s consider governments’ refusals to implement best-practices in management and to adhere to transparency standards. These are huge problems and not just at the federal government level.
The state governments of California and Washington are typical examples:
California. Thanks to The Sacramento Bee, we wouldn’t learn California agencies’ pay cuts hit departments unevenly, or why. It’s rare for a local TV station to be as enterprising.
In a related matter, California state employees are given wide latitudes for leaves (see personnel policies). But only a third of the state agencies reportedly send certain payroll records to Sacramento. This means records are more costly to maintain, audit and verify such scattered cost centers, vis-à-vis a centralized location.
One also has to wonder about accountability. California state workers already enjoy comparatively high wages and benefits. The accrued vacation time is subject to abuse, especially when an outside watchdog is not allowed access to the records.
Typically, many government managers are afraid of their unions and employees. Last year’s furlough issue typifies the litigious atmosphere and lack of empathy for taxpayers. Government employees are notorious for gaming the system to disingenuously jack up their pensions. Pensions are calculated based on the workers’ level pay before retirement. Plus, California has a $48 billion unfunded pension liability, according to a Pew Study: California Faces Challenges in Managing Bills Coming.
So, it’s necessary to centralize the recordkeeping, and it would make it easier to check such records. When Californians are struggling in an era of high unemployment in an economic downturn, such state behavior is eye-opening. And given that California is mired in red ink, it’s important for state government to conform to best-practices.
Why else have a state controller?
Washington. It’s also important to question the Washington State Legislature’s and bureaucrats’ elitist handling of taxpayer assets and disrespect of transparency standards. Just a few years ago, I devoted multiple columns about their shell game to furtively circumvent the state’s legal spending limit after incriminating e-mails were discovered. It resulted in a case before the Washington Supreme Court.
But nothing changed and the chicanery continues.
Three times voters approved taxpayers’ protections. But lawmakers keep circumventing the wishes of voters. Despite multi-billion dollar shortfalls, the spending keeps increasing; while the private sector has cut back significantly and has lost about 200,000 jobs in the past few years.
Washington has an outstanding state auditor who has repeatedly demonstrated the need for transparency and conducts performance audits. But not enough people in state government want transparency and good performance.
TV News
My sense is that a TV steady coverage of important issues would help put a stop to the government dysfunction.
For example, the average half hour of TV newscasts in Los Angeles has a whopping 22 seconds devoted to reports about local government, according to research by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
The study, reported by Variety, indicates the 22 seconds is comprised of “…budgets, law enforcement, education, new ordinances, voting procedures, city and government actions and more…”
Local business and the economy got a sum total of 29 seconds per half hour.
To what did the stations allocate their news coverage?
- Crime – two minutes, 50 seconds
- Sports and weather – 3 minutes, 36 seconds
- “Fluff” – two minutes, 26 seconds
- Promotional teases – two minutes, 10 seconds
“KCAL ran the most news about local government, economy and business,” Variety reported. “As for the L.A. Times, the paper devoted 10 percent of its front-page space to local government and 6 percent to L.A. business and economy.”
Any you know what? This is typical of most local TV coverage throughout California, Washington and the rest of the nation.
Not to be gauche, but generally the closest the stations come to reporting on the economy and the impacts of business events and trends are ostentatious consumer investigations – but little about business, the big economic picture or public policy. The rest of the time they’re either rewriting Associate Press stories or rushing out to do live shots of traffic accidents. It’s tragic.
When I was a full-time broadcast journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, I learned the public does care about the impacts of government behavior and business on the economy. When we covered a story about state government, it was remarkable to see the abrupt change in bureaucrats’ behavior and ratings improved.
When was the last time you saw a business journalist on your local TV newscast? Or, for that matter, when did you last see an editorial?
Newspapers do a much better job in both areas. But even print business-journalist jobs have been disappearing.
It’s time for reflection and change in the Fourth Estate. It’s a question of pride in doing the right thing for the community. Otherwise, many Americans will continue to feel their economic and political freedoms are at-risk.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s some interesting Internet research: