Yesterday on KUOW I heard state Rep. Reuven Carlyle refer to Washington’s eight “net contributor” counties—that is, the eight counties out of 39 whose taxpayers put more into state coffers than they collectively receive. And so, my interest piqued, I asked Rep. Carlyle for his data, and all I can say is wow… we here in King County are totally getting ripped off!
These are complicated numbers, compiled at Rep. Carlyle’s request by the Office of Financial Management, and I need to analyze them in detail before I comment more thoroughly. But I put together the above chart to provide a little glimpse into what the data reveals.
Basically, the chart graphs the percentage of total state tax revenues collected by county, compared to the percentage of total state K-12 funding received by each county. Only six counties paid a higher percentage of total state revenues than the percentage of total state K-12 funding they received, but no county’s disparity came close to that of King’s, which in 2008 generated a whopping 42 percent of state revenues, while benefiting from only 24 percent of state K-12 spending. (In case you’re not so good at reading bar graphs, it’s not the size of King’s bars that stands out, but the fact that its red bar is bigger than its blue bar, while for most of the other counties, it’s the reverse.)
To put this in perspective, King County school districts benefited from a combined $1,347,163,000 in state K-12 funding in 2008, but had they been funded proportionate to what King County taxpayers put into state coffers, our schools would have received an additional one billion dollars.
I chose K-12 expenditures for this introductory chart for simplicity sake—unlike some other spending categories, K-12 expenditures are clearly made and received in the same county—but in general, King’s 42/24 revenue/expenditure ratio holds up across the board. And, ironically (though not surprisingly), the more a county benefits from this redistribution of wealth, the more likely that county is to vote Republican, and vice versa.
Huh. More later.
N @48,
Yes, I was missing three zeros. That’s what I get for copying and pasting from a spreadsheet where the values represented thousands. Fixed it.
Ah yes, another ‘I hate Eastern Washington’ editorial from Seattle dweller, far left writer Goldy. How very original. I mean, he can’t have said or written this more than two or three hundred times before.
Eastern Washington is far overdue for secession. Actually, all but Pierce, southwestern Snohomish and western King Counties should become their own state, with maybe a reservation at Olympia. The voters everywhere but in those areas get no representation at all except in a few local issues. Certainly my suburban eastern King County neighbors are sick and tired of elitist liberals like Goldy telling them what is good for them.
Then we can tax the hell out of the whiny liberals for fruit and vegetables and wine, ship everything through the Columbia and gut the only real outgoing customer the port of Seattle has, and charge out of state costs for all the elitist assholes from King County who buy vacation cabins near farms and complain about the tractor noise.
Yeah. I like this idea of teaching those folks from Eastern Washington a lesson. Of course, the lesson would be how much better off they are without the big government expenses out of Western Washington, but hey, a lesson is a lesson.
@40
I think you can assume that 36 is one of two things. He is a liberal pretending to be conservative (badly.) Or he is a fringe lunatic. Either way he isn’t representative.
What you can assume is that conservative want government to act within the very limited sphere of powers they were granted by our federal and state constitutions. You can assume that they want government to live within its’ means just as the taxpayer must. You can assume that they are sufficiently busy taking responsibility for their family and career choices without being asked to provide for those of others. You can assume that they think slowly eroding the thrift, good sense and need for planning of the people of the nation by various welfare programs is a poor idea, particularly if it’s done on borrowed money.
I can and do assume that even far left fringe elements like Goldy want the best for this country. I can assume that if he has children he wants them to grow up in place made better than it was when he was growing up. I can assume that he is wrong about nearly everything, but that he isn’t malicious, just wrong.
In other news far left commentators are so consistently popular that Keith Olbermann has had his contract renewed by MSNBC, the propaganda arm of the Democrat party.
Wait…oh, he got the sack. I thought that all Americans loved progressive politics, so that can’t be. It must be a mistake.
Nope. One more fact challenged lefty goes down in flames. Best of luck Keith. I hear health insurance sales are booming since we all are forced to purchase it whether we need it or want it. You might try that as a career move.