News & Stories

Today’s News and Views is about early childhood education, which has had trouble finding a home (and non-discretionary funding) in Washington State. Last year, early learning supporters — who range from policy experts to sheriff’s deputies — cheered when lawmakers took a significant first step toward fixing the problem by creating a more comprehensive definition […]

By Katie Bethel | MomsRising.org If you shop at Wal-Mart, you may be coming home with more than a good deal–you might be exposed to contagious illnesses like colds and the flu. Why? As the New York Times recently reported, employees receive demerits, lose pay, and ultimately risk termination for taking sick days. That’s exactly […]

For the first time in two decades, our state is poised to suspend the Housing Trust Fund, a key source of funding for the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing. Affordable housing developers have about 2,000 units of affordable housing ready and waiting for funding. Instead, Washington is poised to leave over 4,000 Washington residents […]

King 5’s recent reporting on early education in Washington State includes interviews with businesses leaders and elected officials who have stated their strong support for early education programs. Studies prove early education programs with a high-quality curriculum and teacher training better prepare young children for the classroom — resulting in a more educated workforce and […]

From Real Change News Last week, Gov. Chris Gregoire announced her keenly awaited proposal to close tax loopholes in order to help shrink the state’s $2.6 billion deficit. Education, health and human-services advocates hoped for a big number, but they were disappointed. In fact, Gregoire’s plan fell about $2.584 billion short. After months of careful […]

Today’s News and Views examines the changing faces of early education and community college. A national study evaluating the  Head Start school readiness program have shown lackluster results, leading the Department of Health and Human Services to announce changes intended to improve teacher training and program quality. With Washington’s Governor Gregoire set to introduce a […]

From the Everett Herald The big debate in Olympia for the next two months will be about public services and public revenues. You can’t have one without the other. But tax receipts have fallen even more from last year, so that the Legislature is faced with a budget that is $2.6 billion out of whack. […]

Rebuilding Our Economic Future has put together a couple of fact sheets on how last year’s budget cuts affected Washington’s community and technical colleges and public universities. You can probably guess: enrollments are through the roof as people try to retrain and retool for their next job – but at the same time, financial aid […]

The $2.6 billion revenue shortfall created by the recession has generated no shortage of ideas about how to change Washington’s budget and tax structure to ensure important public systems and structures — like schools, public safety, and transportation, to name just three — stay intact. Most proposals include three possibilities: 1) revenue increases (by ending […]

Michelle Obama on work and family: I’d like to just spend a few brief moments talking about today, an issue that I’ve talked a lot about, and that’s the issue of work-life balance. You know it: the constant struggle to meet our responsibilities both as employees, but also as breadwinners, and mothers and fathers. … […]

In a word: No. In two words: no again. In the posts linked above, Paul Krugman puts one economic shiv after another in the fallacious reasoning used by many critics of the minimum wage. And you don’t need to speak the language of an economist to understand what he’s saying — though he backs it […]

Washington State is losing an estimated 44,000 private and public sector jobs due to billions of dollars in state budget cuts in 2009 – and further cuts could axe another 33,600, according to EOI’s latest economic analysis. By contrast, a combination of new state taxes and federal aid to fill the state’s budget gap could […]

Washington State is once again facing a budget crisis. The economic woes of the Great Recession are hitting state revenues hard, with a projected shortfall of $2.6 billion. In upcoming discussions and votes on a 2010-2011 supplemental budget, Washington lawmakers will be presented with a stark choice: raise new revenue – or cut thousands of […]

The current state budget proposal relies on huge budget cuts to K-12 schools, higher education, health care, public safety and other important services. Those cuts will devastate Washington families and jeopardize the future of our state’s children. See how it will affect your local school district here. But cutting millions more from our classrooms will […]

Remember those ’80’s commercials with the tagline, “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen”? It turns out that when 20,000 Washingtonians talk, the same is true in Olympia. In the Hutton ads, a whole bunch of people would be merrily shopping, dining or walking through the airport when someone would say, “Well my broker is with […]

When the folks from Rebuilding Our Economic Future brought over 20,000 petition signatures to Olympia calling for a fair and humane budget, elected leaders weren’t the only ones listening. Tim Eyman got an earful too: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQ3mZ1HUQo]

Seattle Times | Gregoire’s plan to fill budget hole: cuts, taxes, federal help | Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed Tuesday what she called a “responsible, balanced approach of painful cuts and new revenue” to close the state’s $2.6 billion budget shortfall. But Gregoire’s latest budget blueprint — which relies heavily on hoped-for federal money and one-time […]

Posted at Truthout.org The deficit hawks in Congress are pushing again to establish a special commission to deal with the problem of the deficit. They are trying to include a provision establishing such a commission as part of a bill to increase the country’s debt ceiling. The deal is that this commission would produce a […]

In 2008, the recession hit construction and manufacturing especially hard, causing unemployment in those largely male-dominated industries to increase dramatically. And retail sales have also experienced widespread layoffs, especially in motor-vehicle related sales and building/garden supply stores which are 79% and 65% male, respectively. Women’s contributions to family earnings leapt during the first year of […]

Huffington Post -> Paid Leave Makes Horse Sense: Vacations are good for your health. And, you don’t need to get away to any fancy Caribbean retreat to get the benefit of time-off from work. But it helps if you are a horse. In New York City, that is. | More Sloan Work and Family Network […]

We face stark choices in Washington State this year about our future and the things we value. For example: Do we put college out of reach for more than 10,000 low-income students by cutting their financial aid — or do we close unjustified tax loopholes? Do we kick hundreds of thousands of people (including 16,000 […]

From the Everett Herald: We begin 2010 with a pretty severe hangover from 2009. The national economy is bouncing along the bottom, unemployment continues at record high levels, consumption is down, tax receipts are dwindling, and public services have been pulled back just when we need them the most. In short, all the “hope” of […]

Crosscut -> How budget cuts short-changed the UW: Some straight talk about complicated budget maneuvers, making clear that the University was one of the biggest losers in the nation, and the state. Confused about how the University of Washington fared in the 2009-11 biennial budget? So was I — and I’m an insider, having devoted […]

Halfway through the 111th congressional session, recent headlines have focused almost exclusively on health care reform. But our elected officials have made progress on important work-family legislation as well: The Healthy Families Act (House and Senate) has received overwhelming support. More than 125 Representative and Senators are co-sponsoring the legislation. The Act would provide a […]

ABC News -> Cities, Counties Take Back Corporate Tax Breaks: Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal’s a deal. As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough […]

In the upcoming legislative session, our elected officials will need to take a hard look at revenue increases necessary to maintain essential public services. Possibilities include ending special tax breaks, expanding the sales tax base, increasing sin taxes and taxing pollution. But we also need to tackle reform of Washington’s tax structure. According to “Who […]

The U.S. is currently the only developed nation that does not require some paid sick leave for workers. Nearly 40 percent of private sector workers have no paid sick leave, including 78 percent of hotel workers and 85 percent of food service workers. A survey last year by the National Opinion Research Center at the […]