Gov. Inslee’s Claims About State Workers Pay Raises Found To Be False

Gov. Inslee's 2015-17 state biennium budget includes a call for $600 million in new taxes, to be used for pay increases for public sector state workers. He claims they haven't had a pay raise in six years. But is that false?

  According to a report released this month by the Washington Policy Center (WPC), and covered by numerous media outlets, Inslee was partially correct, but purposely ignored some of the facts.

State employees have not received what is called a COLA (cost of living adjustment), but that's only ONE form of pay raise. Inslee chose to ignore the fact that through automatic step increases, and promotional boosts, nearly all state workers have had their pay climb several times over the last six years. Automatic step increases take place when workers pass certain milestones on the job such as length of employment or other factors. But Inslee chose to not mention these raises in order to give the impression state workers are not being fairly compensated. Why would he do that? The answer may lie in what happened in 2014.

You may remember the secret talks Inslee held last summer with the leaders of the public sector unions who were instrumental in helping him get elected. They took place  in Olympia and other locations. They were closed to the public, media and even legislators.

Upon the conclusion of these talks, Inslee proposed $600 million in new taxes for state worker pay raises, and that's included in his 2015-17 budget proposal. He also failed to mention the $300 million cost increase that will come from the health care benefits given to these workers, or their very "comfortable" pensions - as described by the WPC.

Nobody is saying workers, state or private, should not be fairly compensated for their jobs. But to conveniently ignore certain facts to paint a certain picture is not being honest. And, Inslee has been under increasing fire over him breaking his "no new taxes" pledge that he ran on in the November 2012 election. According to the WPC:

"When Governor Inslee was seeking election he said a tax increase was the wrong direction for Washington and that he would veto any tax increase that reached his desk. The Seattle Times reports that when Governor Inslee was asked about his broken tax vow, he said that working families need to “buck up” and devote more of their take-home pay to paying state taxes."

The WPC and increasing numbers of critics say these secret negotiations on behalf of state workers need to be changed. Previous Governors Gary Locke and Chris Gregoire also engaged in these closed sessions with state worker unions.

There's currently porposed legislation in Olympia that would require state worker salary negotiations to be open and accessible to media, legislators and citizens - anyone who wants to listen in and possibly give their opinion.