The story goes on to quote our Majority Leader Lynn Kessler:In Washington, lawmakers finally have figured out a way to cut down on their paperwork. They simply can’t afford to print as many documents. The state House printing budget has been cut by $568,000.
Committee staff no longer produce glossy binders filled with documents for members to leaf through on the dais. Instead, lawmakers read legislation, bill analyses and other necessary materials on their laptops. “We’ve also made that same electronic information available to the public, though the public website,” says Bernard Dean, deputy clerk of the House.
Legislators also more often communicate electronically with their constituents, given a 38 percent cut to their printing and postal budgets. “The cost of mailing a newsletter far exceeds the cost of e-mailing a newsletter,” Dean says.
In the Washington House, the number of aides hired for the session has decreased, and about 10 year-round staff positions have been eliminated. The staff who remain are taking furlough days. Legislative staff overall accounted for 62 percent of the unpaid days taken by Washington state employees during the first six months of the current fiscal year—an astonishing statistic when you consider that House and Senate personnel together make up just 440 of the state’s 71,000 full-time employees.
That discrepancy won’t last. Lynn Kessler, the Washington House majority leader, notes that other
state employees now find themselves facing furlough days, which were imposed this year. Kessler also argues that the Legislature needed to grow more efficient and get out of the business of doing things that private companies should be taking care of.
Kessler says the Legislature, despite the cuts, “is left in a place we’re comfortable with. We’ve just cut back like everybody else,” she says. “We are not more important than the private sector people who have been laid off.”
