Enrollment in the BHP, a state-subsidized health care program for the working poor (partly), was at 100,000 not too long ago. Last I read, it was ramping down to fewer than 80,000 by attrition.

Now, Gov. Chris Gregoire's budget tells BHP administrator Steve Hill to cut the program by 42 percent to save $250 million. That will be partly a reduction in numbers of people with coverage and partly a "skinnier" benefit plan.

Needless to say, advocates for the poor and elderly don't like those cuts.

Ingrid McDonald at AARP provides this take on part of the budget.

"It nicely summarizes the Health and Long Term Care impacts of the Governor's proposed budget that we understand SO FAR," says Jerry Reilly, chairman of the Elder Care Alliance.

First, is AARP's statement on the budget, followed by a quick summary by McDonald and the state Labor Council's Robby Stern.

=> Read more!

Seattle Times reporter Andrew Garber today writes about an endangered species: reporters covering the Legislature in Olympia.

According to Garber, there were 34 reporters covering the Legislature in 1993. Last year there were 17. Now, as the Legislature wrestles with a $5.7 billion budget deficit, there may be only 10.

Why should you care?

Garber quotes Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard: "When reporters leave the state Capitol, the mice play."

"It takes no imagination," Jones said, when "the governor of Illinois was arrested (on corruption charges) ... to understand that state government needs watching very carefully."

You can read the full article here.

OK. Gov. Chris Gregoire doesn't actually thank the Service Employees International Union for all its hard (and expensive) work in helping her win reelection, not in her budget, anyway. But I'm sure she did thank them at some point, especially Local 775.

But her budget provides absolutely no money to pay for the extra hours of training that the union wanted for its current (and future) members, the home-care workers who take care of disabled people in their homes. That's what Initiative 1029 was all about, wasn't it? It does, however, have money to pay for criminal background checks to make sure the workers haven't been convicted of elder abuse and other such crimes.

But the $30 million for 75 hours of training isn't in the 2009-11 budget. I guess House Speaker Frank Chopp will have to put some in the budget for SEIU, over the bodies of his caucus' nurse-member contingent, I suspect. (Opponents of I-1029 contended it gave the union a big tool for recruitment, by letting them say the state will pay for their training.)

UPDATE: SEIU says the governor's budget proposal violates the law. (True, it would take a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to change I-1029 this soon, but I don't think that's really going to be a problem next session.)

You'll notice that Gregoire also books $780 million in more Medicaid money from the feds and $150 million increase in welfare money from the feds. That's the assumption that Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, called the huge "flaw" in the guv's budget.

Can you imagine how much worse the cuts to Health Care and Human Services would be (they're cut by 12.2 percent in guv's budget) if the Legislature doesn't get the money and has to cut another $1 billion (or ask voters to raise taxes)?

=> Read more!

I haven't read Gov. Chris Gregoire's transportation budget proposal in detail yet, but the overview below doesn't sound good for Pierce County.

The next phase of carpool lanes on Interstate 5 through Tacoma, (I think that's the part that includes the I-5 bridge over the Puyallup River) would be delayed for 2 more years under the guv's budget.

The danger is, the longer those projects get delayed, the less likely they are to ever get built without another gas tax hike. (Rep. Dan Roach, R-Bonney Lake, has more to say on this, which I'll pass on as soon as I can find his e-mail.)

And just for the record, it's now 2009 (almost) and there still are no carpool lanes on I-5 in Tacoma.

It's now becoming more obvious just how much of the 14.5-cent gas tax increases from 2003 and 2005 are being sucked up by the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle ($2.4 billion? $2.8 billion? $3.5 billion?) and the Highway 520 bridge replacement between Seattle and King County's Eastside ($4 billion? $6 billion?)

At yesterday's news conference, Gregoire said her philosophy for her transportation budget this year is "shovel ready" projects, those that can be started within six months or so. That means more paving projects, for one.

Rising cost estimates are killing projects left and right. The analysis below bluntly states what we've all suspected: if your pet transpo project is delayed beyond 2012, it probably won't be built.

=> Read more!

The original plan by Gov. Chris Gregoire was to expand half-day kindergarten at public schools to full days by 10 percent increments over a decade. The current budget got us to roughly 20 percent of schools, the ones with the poorest students and lowest test scores.

That would stay in place under the governor's budget proposal, but there will be no expansion to 40 percent of schools in 2009-11, as called for in the original plan.

The guv saves $350 million by not giving pay raises to teachers and other school employees. But I'm beginning to wonder how the guv's budget office calculated that. The Consumer Price Index for the past year was 4.1 percent and that's the amount of raise teachers were supposed to get in the 2009-10 school year.

Initiative 732 pegged school workers' cost-of-living raises to inflation.

But inflation is expected to be negative for this year. Does that mean teachers wouldn't have been entitled to any raise in 2010-11 anyway? Or if the CPI is negative, do teachers have to give back money to the state?

Bottom line: The state will give local school districts $129 million more in 2009-11 so they can keep pace with the cost of health benefits for school employees. And even though the state isn't providing any money (under Gregoire's budget proposal) for raises, you know local school unions will be asking their school boards to make up for what the state doesn't give them. That's what happened in 2003-05 under the infamous "Rossi budget."

I believe the Tacoma school district has a contract that gives its workers 1 percent more than what they get from the state. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Bad news for new state schools chief Randy Dorn: You'll have to get by with $1 million less for "conferences." More brown-bag lunches; fewer junkets to Las Vegas, or whereever OSPI goes for seminars.

Here's the general analysis of Gregoire's budget that was done by the House budget committee staff:

Highlights of the Governor Gregoire’s Proposed 2009-11 Biennial K-12 Budget

For K-12 Public Schools:

· Total Proposed Spending: $14.4 billion (NGFS)

· Total Proposed Reductions: $800 million

=> Read more!

OK. This part is mostly for budget wonks. But Gov. Chris Gregoire is proposing to combine a bunch of smaller funds/accounts into the main General Fund.

The upshot is that the debt limit -- the amount of money the state can borrow in any particular year -- is based on how much money the state collects in taxes for its General Fund. I think it's a rolling average over 3 years or so.

Anyway, Gregoire's 2009-11 budget increases the amount of money that goes into the General Fund by $1.5 billion. That lets the state borrow an additional $200 million to spend on building projects in the upcoming biennium.

UPDATE: Double the amount of money going into the General Fund because of the consolidation of those accounts. "The revision does not contribute to solving the projected deficit, but will add $1.5 billion to both the expenditure and revenue amounts for the General Fund State," according to a footnote in the guv's budget.

The upshot is the state can borrow $200 million more than it otherwise would have been able to do, said Victor Moore, the governor's budget director.

The governor's capital budget for 2009-11 calls for $3.43 billion in new spending. The biggest single chunk is $827 million for local public school construction (the state's share). That's actually $1 billion when you add in the extra $130 million the guv put into the remained of the current budget cycle.

And House Speaker Frank Chopp will be happy with the $100 million Gregoire wants to spend on the House Trust Fund, homes for poor people is one of his favorites.

With tax collections in steep decline, Washington would be taking a double hit: less money to spend on programs, AND less money for building projects because of a lower limit on how much can be borrowed.

President Barack Obama and Gregoire both think the nation and state can build their way out of the recession.

Putting money that now goes into the Health Services Account (cigarette taxes and hospital taxes), Water Quality Account, Violence Reduction and Drug Enforcement Account into the General Fund also makes it easier for us reporters to write about the budget.

But I think that was the least of Moore's and his staff's concerns when they came up with that idea for the governor.