Rodney Tom is wrong: Split government isn’t serving Washington State well at all

Yes­ter­day, man­age­ment at The Seat­tle Times tac­it­ly admit­ted they could­n’t bring them­selves to endorse the cam­paign of Repub­li­can Jiny­oung Lee Englund, who is run­ning to take over from appointee Dino Rossi in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict. In the appar­ent place of an endorse­ment of Jiny­oung, the Times today pub­lished an op-ed by ex-Sen­a­tor Rod­ney Tom extolling the con­cept of split gov­ern­ment.

While Tom’s piece care­ful­ly avoids men­tion­ing Jiny­oung Lee Englund or her Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Man­ka Dhin­gra, it’s clear that Tom wants to see an Englund vic­to­ry — not because he thinks Englund would be a great leg­is­la­tor, but because he wants the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans to remain in pow­er in Olympia.

Tom, you’ll recall, deliv­ered the Sen­ate into Repub­li­can hands in late 2012 by engi­neer­ing a pow­er coup with Tim Shel­don of Pot­latch. Tom and Shel­don defect­ed from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus to the Repub­li­can cau­cus, allow­ing the Repub­li­cans to become the major­i­ty par­ty despite not hav­ing won a major­i­ty in the 2012 elections.

Tom left the Sen­ate at the end of 2014, hav­ing cho­sen not seek anoth­er term. But he remains invest­ed in main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo that he cre­at­ed in Olympia.

“It might be eas­i­er to have a house with only dogs or only cats — or with only Democ­rats,” Tom writes. “But I pre­fer we fig­ure out how to all get along togeth­er. That is bet­ter for us. It is bet­ter for our com­mu­ni­ties. It is bet­ter for our state.”

Huh? If Repub­li­cans lose to Man­ka Dhin­gra and the Democ­rats in the 45th, they would be out of pow­er, but not out of the Sen­ate. Regard­less of what hap­pens in the elec­tion, there is still going to be a Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus with over twen­ty mem­bers. To put it anoth­er way: Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will still be in the house no mat­ter what. They just won’t get to run the place next year if Man­ka wins.

Speak­ing of Man­ka, she hap­pens to be the most accom­plished of the three can­di­dates seek­ing to become the next sen­a­tor from the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict. She has an impres­sive resume and com­pelling expe­ri­ence for a first time can­di­date. Jiny­oung Englund, mean­while, is run­ning a cam­paign devoid of substance.

But Tom clear­ly cares more about the par­ty ban­ner Man­ka is run­ning under than her best-in-field qual­i­fi­ca­tions or her ideas for improv­ing Wash­ing­ton State.… which is fun­ny, because I can recall hear­ing Tom opine that the per­son is more impor­tant than the par­ty while hold­ing forth at East­side leg­isla­tive town halls.

What Tom is say­ing in his op-ed today is the oppo­site: The par­ty is more impor­tant than the per­son. The unsaid impli­ca­tion of Tom’s argu­ment is that if you’re a vot­er in the 45th, you should vote for Jiny­oung mere­ly so that we can con­tin­ue to have split gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton, which Tom thinks is sim­ply wonderful.

The real­i­ty is quite dif­fer­ent. Here’s an overview of the evi­dence that split gov­ern­ment has been bad for Wash­ing­ton State.

Split government has resulted in bad budgeting practices

Split gov­ern­ment has made Wash­ing­ton State a poster child for fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Since the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans assumed pow­er, they have thrice brought state gov­ern­ment to the brink of a shut­down (in 2013, 2015 and again this year) in order to gain lever­age in bud­get negotiations.

A dam­ag­ing side effect of that harm­ful, self-serv­ing strat­e­gy has been a lack of trans­paren­cy. Because deals to keep state gov­ern­ment open have been ham­mered out at the last minute, with only hours to spare, there’s been lit­tle or no time for pub­lic input or out­side scruti­ny on the Leg­is­la­ture’s final work product.

This year, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans fool­ish­ly decid­ed to make the cap­i­tal bud­get a hostage too, and demand­ed a ran­som that Democ­rats would­n’t pay. They want­ed House Democ­rats to capit­u­late on unre­lat­ed pol­i­cy mat­ters before they would vote out a cap­i­tal bud­get. His­tor­i­cal­ly, cap­i­tal bud­gets have passed out of the Leg­is­la­ture with broad bipar­ti­san sup­port. But not this year.

As a result, the state has no cap­i­tal bud­get at all, a sad fact that Tom con­ve­nient­ly did­n’t men­tion in his op-ed (it would have under­mined his argument).

Time­ly, trans­par­ent bud­get­ing is the hall­mark of a well-run state. Every­one ben­e­fits from the cer­tain­ty of know­ing what’s in the bud­get pri­or to June 30th, the end of the state’s fis­cal year. Local gov­ern­ments and agency lead­ers in par­tic­u­lar have been ham­strung by the Leg­is­la­ture’s fail­ure to agree on an oper­at­ing bud­get before the eleventh hour. They’re even more ham­strung by the lack of a cap­i­tal budget.

“For our busi­ness­es to thrive, they need pre­dictabil­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion, not wild swings from left to right and vice ver­sa,” Tom argues.

Split gov­ern­ment has pro­duced pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of pre­dictabil­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion. Any­one who val­ues those things and believes the dynam­ics of our Leg­is­la­ture affect our busi­ness cli­mate should not be endors­ing the sta­tus quo.

Insan­i­ty is doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result. That’s an overused cliche, often attrib­uted to Albert Ein­stein, but it seems applic­a­ble here. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have now held pow­er for four and a half years, and we’ve gone to the brink of a state gov­ern­ment shut­down three times.

Why should any­one expect that 2019 would be any dif­fer­ent with them in charge?

If vot­ers want to get back to sound bud­get­ing prac­tices, they’ll have to put an end to split gov­ern­ment by tak­ing away the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ power.

Split government is killing needed public policy changes

Pub­lic opin­ion research sug­gests Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are anx­ious to see their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives take action on a host of press­ing issues, like:

• ful­fill­ing our state’s para­mount duty to amply pro­vide for the edu­ca­tion of all young peo­ple resid­ing with­in our borders
• reform­ing our upside down tax code
• reduc­ing the pol­lu­tion that’s dam­ag­ing our climate
• expand­ing health­care coverage
• con­fronting sys­temic racism in our crim­i­nal jus­tice system

… and so much more.

Sad­ly, progress has been elu­sive because the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have turned the cham­ber they con­trol into a pol­i­cy grave­yard. The House keeps pass­ing good bills, some even with sup­port from the House Repub­li­cans, that the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans keep on killing, often with­out so much as a hearing.

Here’s a few examples:

• Vot­ing Rights Act
• The DISCLOSE Act
• Equal Pay Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act
• Stu­dent Loan Bill of Rights
• Cor­po­rate Crimes Account­abil­i­ty Act
• Pre­scrip­tion Drug Pric­ing Accountability
• Pro­tect­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ Inter­net Privacy
• Wash­ing­ton Kids Ready to Learn/Breakfast After the Bell
• Requir­ing health plans to cov­er, with no cost shar­ing, all pre­ven­tive services
• Pro­vid­ing rea­son­able accom­mo­da­tions in the work­place for preg­nant women

Fol­low the links, and you’ll see these are bills that received a vote in the House, but died in the Sen­ate. If Sen­ate Repub­li­cans were not in pow­er, these bills like­ly would have received a vote on the Sen­ate floor instead of being blocked in committee.

Split government is stifling discussions on key issues

Split gov­ern­ment is also hurt­ing wor­thy caus­es that don’t yet have a major­i­ty of votes to pass in each cham­ber, but need dis­cus­sion and debate.

A great exam­ple is abolition.

A grow­ing num­ber of Repub­li­cans — includ­ing for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ry Nealey, and State Sen­a­tor Mau­reen Walsh — have con­clud­ed it’s time to get rid of the death penal­ty.

So has The Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board.

But even though there is grow­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port for such a move, the Leg­is­la­ture is not seri­ous­ly dis­cussing the idea, because the extrem­ist core of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus is so rigid and closed-minded.

Cur­rent Sen­ate Law and Jus­tice Chair Mike Pad­den is a vocif­er­ous sup­port­er of state spon­sored exe­cu­tions and has used his perch to choke off dis­cus­sion. He is backed in that stance by top Sen­ate Repub­li­can Mark Schoesler.

See­ing that Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will absolute­ly not budge from their immoral hard­line posi­tion, House Judi­cia­ry Chair Lau­rie Jink­ins has con­clud­ed it would be point­less for the House to try to advance an abo­li­tion bill for the time being.

But if vot­ers give Democ­rats a Sen­ate major­i­ty this autumn, Pad­den and Schoesler will be oust­ed from pow­er, and the cause of abo­li­tion will at least be giv­en con­sid­er­a­tion in the Sen­ate as well as the House start­ing in 2018.

Split government is draining resources and morale

The­atri­cal, drawn out leg­isla­tive ses­sions in which not much gets accom­plished have become the norm in Wash­ing­ton State thanks to split government.

As men­tioned, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have repeat­ed­ly brought the state to the brink of a gov­ern­ment shut­down three times in the span of four years. Because of their self­ish­ness, the Leg­is­la­ture has become less effec­tive and cred­i­ble as an insti­tu­tion. Law­mak­ers are spend­ing more time in Olympia while get­ting less done.

This has had unhealthy ram­i­fi­ca­tions for every­one in Wash­ing­ton, but it’s been espe­cial­ly tough on the law­mak­ers them­selves and the staff who sup­port them.

Increas­ing­ly, when I ask law­mak­ers “How’s it going down there?”, the answer I get back is: “Bru­tal”. The inces­sant spar­ring and lack of progress on mat­ters of con­cern to the sev­en mil­lion plus inhab­i­tants of the region’s largest state is tak­ing a big toll on the morale and emo­tion­al health of the peo­ple who work in our statehouse.

It’s also been waste­ful with respect to resources. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans could under­stand if spe­cial ses­sions were being called to give leg­is­la­tors more time to devise solu­tions to stub­born­ly per­sis­tent prob­lems like our regres­sive tax code.

But that’s not why spe­cial ses­sions have become so com­mon. They’ve become com­mon because Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have delib­er­ate­ly con­spired to keep Wash­ing­ton in a per­pet­u­al­ly man­u­fac­tured fis­cal crisis.

If the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans lose pow­er lat­er this year„ the dynam­ics of the Sen­ate will dra­mat­i­cal­ly change… for the bet­ter. Instead of hav­ing an adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ship with the Gov­er­nor and the House, the Sen­ate would have a friend­ly rela­tion­ship. There would be be a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties for cooperation.

Coop­er­a­tion trumps com­pe­ti­tion when it comes to gov­ern­ing. If that is what vot­ers want to see, as opposed to more of the grid­lock we’ve had over the past few years, then they will have to change the com­po­si­tion of the Sen­ate to get it.

Such a change could be very lib­er­at­ing — even for the Repub­li­cans. As it stands now, the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans are already behav­ing like an oppo­si­tion cau­cus. If they lose their major­i­ty, that is what they would actu­al­ly become. They would cease to become respon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of the Sen­ate, but they would still have the abil­i­ty to influ­ence pol­i­cy bills and bud­gets, just like the House Repub­li­cans. They could grand­stand to their heart’s con­tent with­out par­a­lyz­ing the Legislature.

Wash­ing­ton has strug­gled with split gov­ern­ment for four and a half years now. Rod­ney Tom looks at the results of the pow­er coup he engi­neered with the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, and he likes what he sees. But then, he sees what he wants to see. He’s become very dis­con­nect­ed from the East­side vot­ers he used to represent.

Since choos­ing not to run for reelec­tion three years ago, he’s become a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive, man­ag­ing an attack PAC that unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to defeat incum­bent Supreme Court Jus­tices Bar­bara Mad­sen and Char­lie Wig­gins.

Mean­while, vot­ers in his dis­trict have sent increas­ing­ly pro­gres­sive Democ­rats to rep­re­sent them in Olympia. They, like their neigh­bors in the 45th and 41st, val­ue prag­ma­tism and progress, which we won’t see if Tom’s sta­tus quo persists.

On Tues­day evening, we’ll get an incli­na­tion of where at least some of the vot­ers in the 45th stand — and con­se­quent­ly, where our state may be headed.