Wow! Where is all the tax revenue going? Down some black hole?
When you look at the state's gross tax revenue, it's tempting to think waste until you spend a bit of time looking at exactly what the state does with that money.
Something like 90¢ on the dollar of the state's general fund is allocated to supporting just three required missions: education, medication and incarceration. None are optional.
The supreme court's McCleary decision requires the state to increase it's historic underfunding of K-12 education to the tune of $1B over the next budget cycle. Medicaid and other medical programs are required by law and aren't going away. Opening the gates at the state's prisons and letting the inmates go free is also not an option.
So that leaves the question of what to do with the other 10¢? The short answer is that dime is split into many small pieces to pay for everything else the state provides.
Everyone here howls at all the user fees now being charged, especially for recreational use. User fee income does not go into the general fund but rather stays with the department that generated it. Thankfully, if it weren't for those fees (and fines from citations), WDFW would have shut down a long time ago thanks to continual reductions in financial support from the general fund. Same with DNR and Parks.
As a larger question though, the current budget impasse is as much about increasing demands on a finite amount of money as it is political intransigence.
Yes, the amount of money the state spends rises every year. But it's not rising as quickly as the population is growing, so the per capita expenditure is actually falling. The state's population is expected to hit 9 million by 2020. That means a lot more kids going to school and a lot more folks using state medical programs, being sent to prison, and wearing out roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
IMHO, the long-term fix is that Washington will eventually have to implement a state income tax (just like Oregon will have to implement a sales tax). Relying solely on sales tax, B&O and property taxes to fund delivery of increasingly utilized state services is less and less viable.
Can you imagine paying 15% or 20% sales tax? Neither can I.
K