This Washington
The Catch to McKenna's Plan? State Already Cut Workforce Nine Percent
McKenna pledge to cut state workforce is hardly a new idea; more than 6,000 employees have been let go in the last three years.
At his gubernatorial campaign kickoff breakfast in Bellevue earlier this week, one cost-cutting measure that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna hyped as a way to save money and fund his campaign pledge to increase funding for K-12 and higher education was to cut the state workforce by 5 to 10 percent—or as many as 6,200 employees.
In a policy paper he released at the kickoff, under the header "Reducing the Size and Cost of State General Government," McKenna writes:
Complaining that McKenna isn't being honest with voters, Jaime Smith, spokeswoman for McKenna's Democratic rival, US Rep. Jay Inslee, says, "The public needs to know where that 10 percent comes from. Are we going to have fewer case workers for kids in foster care? Fewer teachers?" [pullquote]Since 2008, when Olympia started cutting employees to deal with the budget crisis, the state government workforce has already been cut down by more than 6,000 jobs.[/pullquote]
Belittling "the same old Republican talking points we've been hearing for years," Smith concludes: "I don't call that a policy paper, I call that rhetoric."
Smith's question about McKenna's proposal to cut state workers comes with some context: Since 2008, as the state started cutting employees to deal with the budget crisis, the state government workforce has already been cut down by more than 6,000 jobs—about a 9 percent decline, according to Office of Financial Management. The state population has grown more than 2 percent in that time. The current workforce, 62,130, is also about 2000 employees less than it was a decade ago, they say.
Those real, and sobering, numbers aside, the Seattle Times was evidently still pretty impressed with McKenna's homework, writing about McKenna's kickoff, "McKenna’s continuing series of issue papers are more specific than anything proposed yet by his presumed Democratic opponent."
Asked to respond to the Times' dig, Smith said the Times "hadn't been paying attention to what Inslee's been saying on the stump" about jobs and education, adding: "Sure, we could write something up now and throw it up on the web, but we'd rather take the time to have a specific plan rather than putting up fluff."
We have a message in to the McKenna campaign.
At his gubernatorial campaign kickoff breakfast in Bellevue earlier this week, one cost-cutting measure that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna hyped as a way to save money and fund his campaign pledge to increase funding for K-12 and higher education was to cut the state workforce by 5 to 10 percent—or as many as 6,200 employees.
In a policy paper he released at the kickoff, under the header "Reducing the Size and Cost of State General Government," McKenna writes:
As we empower every agency’s employees and institute the rigorous performance management system that we use in the AGO, we will look for opportunities to further shrink the number of state general government employees, e.g., by another five to ten percent in the next biennium ...
Complaining that McKenna isn't being honest with voters, Jaime Smith, spokeswoman for McKenna's Democratic rival, US Rep. Jay Inslee, says, "The public needs to know where that 10 percent comes from. Are we going to have fewer case workers for kids in foster care? Fewer teachers?" [pullquote]Since 2008, when Olympia started cutting employees to deal with the budget crisis, the state government workforce has already been cut down by more than 6,000 jobs.[/pullquote]
Belittling "the same old Republican talking points we've been hearing for years," Smith concludes: "I don't call that a policy paper, I call that rhetoric."
Smith's question about McKenna's proposal to cut state workers comes with some context: Since 2008, as the state started cutting employees to deal with the budget crisis, the state government workforce has already been cut down by more than 6,000 jobs—about a 9 percent decline, according to Office of Financial Management. The state population has grown more than 2 percent in that time. The current workforce, 62,130, is also about 2000 employees less than it was a decade ago, they say.
Those real, and sobering, numbers aside, the Seattle Times was evidently still pretty impressed with McKenna's homework, writing about McKenna's kickoff, "McKenna’s continuing series of issue papers are more specific than anything proposed yet by his presumed Democratic opponent."
Asked to respond to the Times' dig, Smith said the Times "hadn't been paying attention to what Inslee's been saying on the stump" about jobs and education, adding: "Sure, we could write something up now and throw it up on the web, but we'd rather take the time to have a specific plan rather than putting up fluff."
We have a message in to the McKenna campaign.
