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Please look at the source document from the Office of Financial Management. The Stranger article is well....bs, though it is based on OFM document.
The 2008 data has been superceded by the 2012 data set. It is interesting to compare the 2008 and 2012 data sets. BTW, much of the change has been that the state on internet sales has been returning the sales taxes to the point of purchase (county resident) rather than business location.
The 2012 data set has two methods for computing expenditures and revenues.
Method 1:".......expenditures....driven where benefits are received."
Method 2:".......where the expenditures occur".
Method 2 is the appropriate method to see if money is going back to the counties or is "consumed" by the state outside the county where the "benefit" is directed.
For example, under Method 1 for delivery of health and human services (basically welfare) the state of Washington for Adams County spends more money in Thurston County than they do in Adams County!! The state employees in Thurston County get more money than the state employees and welfare beneficiaries in Adams County!!
Method 2 compares state revenues in Adams County with state expenditures in Adams County.
I used Method 2 for my calculations. So Ferry County goes from 1.88 ratio to a .85 ratio. Looks like a ton of money is skimmed off in Olympia!!
So here are the Counties that receive more in state benefits than pay in taxes and my "guess" at to the reason. I need help in the western Washington counties since I am not that familar with them.
Eastern Washington "Taker" Counties:
Adams 1.03 (poverty, illegal aliens)
Franklin 1.74 (poverty, illegal aliens)
Kittitas 1.02 (Central Washington University)
Okanogan 1.20 (DNR, FWS, and poverty)
Spokane 1.20 (Regional State offices)
Stevens 1.12 (poverty)
Walla Walla 2.08 (Washington State Prison)
Whitman 2.36 (Washington State University)
Yakima 1.46 (poverty, illegal aliens)
I only spent about four hours looking at the data sets. Nobody is paying me to do economic analysis in retirement!!!
People should take a good look at the reports and build their own spreadsheets to look at expenditures per taxpayer, student,etc. There is a lot of interesting stuff buried in the statistics. Lots of questions they you can ask your elected representatives.
The bottom line, on this issue, is that eastern Washington sends MORE tax money to western Washington than it receives in benefits. Do the analysis on your own. All those things that people believe are true are in many cases folk tales. That is why I got paid for doing impartial economic analysis when I was working.
Guess what, it always was an "issue" when the analysis showed a different result than people expected. Focus on the data....it will give you the correct conclusion on which to base public policy.
Usually, when you have a "Method 2", it isn't the preferred one. Usually it is there to satisfy some interest group, economic or political, or just to provide perspective on the preferred method.
Let's look, for instance, at universities and hospitals. State aid to UW goes not just to benefit students from the local county (King County), but from across the state. The same goes for Western and Evergreen in western Washington and WSU, Eastern, and Central in eastern Washington. UW and WSU are also involved in research, which benefits not just their local counties, but the whole state. The same goes for major hospitals that serve not just local patients, but also patients from across the state in need of specialist services not available in their area. Merely allocating all of those expenditures to where they are spent, rather than to whom they benefit, distorts the true picture.
The question is whether the state should be split. If it were, East Washington residents would no longer be eligible for Medicaid benefits received in West Washington, and any students from East Washington attending UW, Western, or Evergreen would be paying out-of-state tuition. No taxes paid by East Washington residents in West Washington would be repatriated as benefits to East Washington. The same is true for any other expenditure that has a state-wide benefit. Therefore, accounting for where taxes are collected, but for whom receives benefits, is the appropriate method.
Usually, when you have a "Method 2", it isn't the preferred one. Usually it is there to satisfy some interest group, economic or political, or just to provide perspective on the preferred method.
Both methods are acceptable. They answer different questions.
Just because a Method is listed second does NOT mean that is isn't the preferred one. It just provides information based on a different set of assumptions. Method 1 is consistent with lots of government analysis. Method 2 is more consistent with analysis done in the private sector. Think of method one as "best accounting practices" and method two as a "cash flow analysis". The advantage of method two is you cannot play games with the data.
I suspect it was the eastern Washington folks that insisted on Method 1. They were probably thinking that it would show a better result for them, not suspecting how much state money really gets spent in Olympia rather than in the counties.
It is telling that more of Adams Counties welfare money gets spent in Olympia, than in the county!!
BTW.....years ago while working I was visited by a state task force dealing with the economic impacts of the Spotted Owl listing on rural communities. They were looking for ideas to help rural counties with the economic impacts.
My suggestion was really simple. Move those clerical, data processing, and other state jobs not associated with policy decisions out to the rural counties. Both the state and counties would win. The state would get better quality employees (this is the reason rural post offices function, while urban post offices are nightmares) and the counties would get a stable payroll paying good wages.
That idea did not go far!! None of the agencies were interested in moving state employees to poor, rural counties.
The important point of the analysis is that eastern Washington pays its fair share of taxes. That is the myth that needs to die. It will shift from time to time. Right now, all the DOT money is going into the mega-projects in Seattle. Once they are completed, you will probably see a shift of transportation dollars to other areas.
I know people in western Washington find this hard to believe, but if eastern Washington were its own state it would be the 36th largest in the Union with regard to population. At that level, all things tend to average out. So you end up with state expenditures and revenues averaging out to similar amounts on either side of the mountains.
I do think the Office of Financial Management did a great job with the analysis. There is lots more information that can be found in the data set.
However, I have other priorities in retirement than going back to work for zero pay.
I am Super Liberal and understand this side of the state makes the laws. I really feel Eastern Washington is not fair because we all know there conservative. Also unlike Eastern Oregon where it is useless land Eastern has nice cities in Spokane, Ellensburg and Tri Cities
What do you think should the state spilt in two
If you split Washington into two states, the Western part of the state will become more liberal and broke than California. It is the conservative parts of the state that make the Western part of the state so desirable to live. Do you really think if the communist/ultra-liberal/fascist people of the Seattle/Puget Sound area had their way, that there wouldn't be a tax on everything you can imagine? They would implement the largest state income tax in the country to "Save the People and the Poor", the minimum wage would be so high that only the most affluent corporations could operate there, like Fast Food Chains and Chain Stores. Also, they would drive away all the businesses and corporations who enjoy all the more conservative-
Sadly, Washington is becoming more and more politically ultra liberal and all the perks that Seattle people and Western Washington people savored so dearly will be disappear and their ultra-liberal and deranged political ambitions take hold and suddenly the foundations that held them fall apart beneath them.
California flourished back when it was a Republican stronghold. Fast forward to the future and all the bleeding heart liberals of the world migrated in droves and the state is a third world, bankrupt basket case that requires stealing tax dollars from American citizens in other states (federal emergency funding) just to keep its head above water.
Yeah, just pray for your own well-being that they don't split Washington into two sides.
Both methods are acceptable. They answer different questions.
Just because a Method is listed second does NOT mean that is isn't the preferred one. It just provides information based on a different set of assumptions. Method 1 is consistent with lots of government analysis. Method 2 is more consistent with analysis done in the private sector. Think of method one as "best accounting practices" and method two as a "cash flow analysis". The advantage of method two is you cannot play games with the data.
You're ignoring that, if the state were split along the Cascade Curtain (that is the question here), your method would have no relevance except for comparisons within a West Washington state or an East Washington state (but not between them). Taxes paid out of state would not be repatriated and benefits received would come only from, and paid for by only taxpayers within, your state. An East Washington capitol and government would also have to be created from the ground up.
You kidding, right? If not, maybe you should consider moving back to Idaho...
I'm from Oregon.. Where did you get the impression I am from Idaho?
No, I am not kidding... If you want an example of how Seattle and Washington would turn out if it was ruled by its radical liberal left-wing population that saturates the Sound, just take a look at the lovely states of New Jersey and Maryland and their lovely cities of Newark and Baltimore. Seattle flourishes because it is in a state that has had enough of a strong Republican/Pro-Business presence to offset the liberal fanaticism. However, as the liberal fanatical presence grows and more business-minded/conservative people are fleeing the state, the state is going to go down the tubes as all the other liberal dominated strongholds are. Look at America's most liberal cities, they are either dominated by rich elitists (New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston) or overrun by criminals and corrupt politicians (Detroit, Newark, Oakland, Philadelphia). Most of these cities are not very livable one way or another. Either you cannot make a living to afford that $4000/mo studio and 15% tax rate with your mediocre salary or you cannot stand living next to all the drug gangs, thugs and criminals.
I'm from Oregon.. Where did you get the impression I am from Idaho?
No, I am not kidding... If you want an example of how Seattle and Washington would turn out if it was ruled by its radical liberal left-wing population that saturates the Sound, just take a look at the lovely states of New Jersey and Maryland and their lovely cities of Newark and Baltimore. Seattle flourishes because it is in a state that has had enough of a strong Republican/Pro-Business presence to offset the liberal fanaticism. However, as the liberal fanatical presence grows and more business-minded/conservative people are fleeing the state, the state is going to go down the tubes as all the other liberal dominated strongholds are. Look at America's most liberal cities, they are either dominated by rich elitists (New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston) or overrun by criminals and corrupt politicians (Detroit, Newark, Oakland, Philadelphia). Most of these cities are not very livable one way or another. Either you cannot make a living to afford that $4000/mo studio and 15% tax rate with your mediocre salary or you cannot stand living next to all the drug gangs, thugs and criminals.
That was ridiculous.
You brought up Maryland and New Jersey specifically and then said: Seattle flourishes because it is in a state that has had enough of a strong Republican/Pro-Business presence to offset the liberal fanaticism. However, as the liberal fanatical presence grows and more business-minded/conservative people are fleeing the state, the state is going to go down the tubes as all the other liberal dominated strongholds are.
However, Maryland and New Jersey specifically, are the numbers 1 and 2 states in the union when it comes to millionaires per capita (no joke, that's literally true, you chose the top two to try and make a point about how Washington will drive out success, just like apparently you think--incorrectly--that they did).
Newark is not in decline because of any specific economic ideology, it's in decline because the more prosperous white population, which made up 82% of the city's population at it's population peak in 1950 fled to the suburbs (taking their taxes with them) in the wake of desegregation efforts (the city is now only 26% white).
Baltimore is slightly more complicated due in part because it's port declined in importance as internal infrastructure improvements made it less vital to commerce. But the same thing happened as in Newark, the population peaked in 1950 and then whites fled to the suburbs taking their tax dollars with them (Maryland's Baltimore suburbs have some of the best public schools in the country).
Cities like Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland (I notice the Republicans being in charge of Michigan and Ohio haven't made either Detroit or Cleveland into a paradise) all have declines largely due to a combination of white flight and deindustrialization. Detroit specifically put all it's economic eggs in one basket (the auto industry) at a time when the auto industry controlled over 90% of the American market and Americans bought brand new cars every couple of years, that was never going to be sustainable. A city like Atlanta only narrowly avoided being the Detroit of the South due to a Georgia state law that allowed Atlanta to gobble up it's surrounding suburbs by forced annexation (canceling out the effects of white flight, which hit Atlanta particularly hard in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education).
As for gentrification, indeed, it's a problem some major cities have faced, but it's happening in Seattle right now in any event, so it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the eastern part of the state is attached to it or not.
Look at America's most liberal cities, they are either dominated by rich elitists (New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston) or overrun by criminals and corrupt politicians (Detroit, Newark, Oakland, Philadelphia). Most of these cities are not very livable one way or another. Either you cannot make a living to afford that $4000/mo studio and 15% tax rate with your mediocre salary or you cannot stand living next to all the drug gangs, thugs and criminals.
Seattle is following the New York route as opposed to the Detroit route.
Detroit, Newark, et al, lost their job bases, and suffered from disinvestment. If that happens to Seattle in my lifetime, I'd be very surprised.
You kidding, right? If not, maybe you should consider moving back to Idaho...
*Sigh*... This comment again.
Why is it always the liberals telling the conservatives to "Get out!"? Aren't you guys supposed to be the "tolerant" ones?
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