When our state’s rural Republicans toss around pejoratives like “socialism,” “redistribution of wealth,” and “welfare state,” they’re usually hurling them at the People’s Republic of Seattle and the Democratic legislators we send to Olympia. As a commenter on the Spokane Spokesman-Review‘s website recently carped: “Eastern Washington… has always been shorted/slighted where state expenditures are concerned! Nearly to the point that we don’t exist!”

That’s not an uncommon complaint. Republican lawmakers make a similar accusation, albeit more veiled, that the state is serving as an engine of wealth redistribution. However, the money is not exactly moving in the direction most Eastern Washingtonians suspect.

Indeed, if Washington is a welfare state, it is residents in these mostly rural, mostly Eastern, mostly Republican counties who are the biggest beneficiaries, while taxpayers here in the blue parts of the state are left footing the bill. And while your typical liberal Seattleite might be neither surprised nor disturbed at this revelation, the degree of the gap between who benefits from state government and who pays for it may come as a bit of a shock.

How big is this disparity? According to 2008 budget figures compiled by the state’s Office of Financial Management at the request of Representatives Reuven Carlyle (D-Seattle) and Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City), King County, with roughly 29 percent of the state population, produced 42 percent of state tax revenues, yet it received back less than 26 percent of state benefits. That’s a return of only 62 cents on the dollar for our state’s Democratic stronghold.

Compare that to the generous $3.16 return on each dollar enjoyed by taxpayers in hard Republican Ferry County in deep northeastern Washington. All in all, only six counties qualified as “net donors” to the rest of the state—San Juan, King, Skagit, Kittitas, Whatcom, and Snohomish—while the remaining 33 counties enjoyed an average return on investment of over $1.40 on every tax dollar sent to Olympia.

The Seattle Times dismissed the issue in late January as “neither new nor news.” But with $4.6 billion of budget cuts in the offing, now is exactly the time to debate these numbers. “We need to challenge the political bureaucracy to get outside of its comfort zone,” Carlyle stresses, “and engage directly in difficult questions of how taxes and spending really flow.” One could argue that as lawmakers struggle to divvy up ever-scarcer resources, the question of who’s funding whom matters more than ever.

This expenditure/revenue disparity extends across every major spending category of the state’s general fund. For example, according to 2008 data compiled by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state spent $6,322 per student in King County to cover K–12 “basic education” costs, ranking us near the bottom statewide, while the usual red-county suspects jockeyed for a position at the top. The winner: Lincoln County, scoring an impressive $10,356 per student.

Break the numbers down by school district, and the chasm yawns wider, as the high cost of subsidizing the many small districts that dot Washington’s rural countryside add up to produce per-student expenditures that border on the absurd. The tiny Evergreen School District in Stevens County received $36,566 in state funds for each of its seven enrolled students, while Adams County’s Benge School District (a whopping enrollment of nine) topped the charts at $43,924 per student. By comparison, the Seattle School District, much maligned for its administrative overhead and other inefficiencies, managed to get by on only $6,740 in state funding per student, just below the state average, while Skamania County’s Stevenson-Carson School District cost state taxpayers a paltry $5,371 per enrollee.

But perhaps the most glaring example of our rural welfare state comes in the category of “welfare” itself, where 2008 data from the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) clearly illustrates just how dependent on Western Washington tax dollars many Eastern Washingtonians have become. King County, home to our state’s largest concentration of urban poor, drew only $538 of DSHS expenditures per capita, ranking it 30th out of 39 counties. Meanwhile, such bastions of self-proclaimed self-sufficiency as rural Adams, Ferry, Pend Oreille, and Okanogan Counties consumed per capita DSHS benefits of over $900, while Yakima County—Washington’s “fruit basket”—topped the charts at $1,129 per person.

To put this level of dependency in perspective, 83 cents out of every dollar Yakima County sends to Olympia is paid back in DSHS benefits alone. Tiny Ferry County actually receives more in just DSHS benefits—$1.14 on the dollar—than the total tax revenues it pays to the state! Schools, corrections, higher education, everything else… that’s all gravy.

The irony here is not that those who benefit most from state spending are paying the least; that’s kinda the way these things are supposed to work. No, the irony is that those rural communities that are most dependent on the state—whose roads and schools and other essential public services couldn’t possibly be maintained without generous state subsidies—are also those least likely to vote for the tax dollars necessary to sustain these services. Just look at the map on the previous page: Those counties that receive the most money back on the dollar are also those that are most likely to vote Republican. But it’s a disconnect that just can’t continue forever.

In the short term, without the sort of new tax revenues red-county voters bitterly oppose, draconian budget cuts will be unavoidable. And since these counties currently enjoy a disproportionate share of state spending, it’s hard to see how they can avoid a disproportionate share of the cuts.

In the long term, the red counties have by far the most to lose from the devolution of state services. Had King County’s school districts been funded proportionate to what King County taxpayers put into state coffers, our schools would have received an additional one billion dollars from the state in 2008; now that’s the kind of data point, if properly understood, that could erode local, blue-­county support for statewide solutions.

Which perhaps explains why so few lawmakers seem to want these data points properly understood. recommended

104 replies on “Welfare State”

  1. Corporation are people too (so says Uncle Sam)!Do they pay their fair share in this state?Nope!Close the tax loopholes and retro-actively enforce a state-wide progressive income tax(because you called your state senator and representatives to sponsor bills in their respective chambers,right?)

  2. I’m not saying that the red counties are bunch of ignorant whining welfare queens, I’m just suggesting that someone introduce a state bill mandating that all tax revenues stay within the county which paid them, and let those proud East Washingtonians embrace or reject socialism.

  3. Just give me the money and shut your pie hole. You gave me Gregoire, Murray, Cantwell and a Democratic majority in the Legislature. You own be big time.

  4. Love the article. It has, obviously, created much debate. However, I think this was mentioned in the PI before. That being said…

    There was a majority that voted against the new taxes. We are now in a budget crisis. My suggestion is that our legislature consider granting the moneys received by each county.

    I’ve decided to become a Conservative. Percentage of monies received by each county should be the percentage of monies spent. We need budget cuts and this is the way to do it.

    If you only give 18% to the budget, you only receive 18% of the budget. Let the counties decide how to handle this money.

    I realize, of course, that State budget from Federal funds is entirely different… oh, wait. We no longer have ear-marked spending. Personally, I’d say stop the farming welfare. That money will really come in handy right now.

  6. Too late for a Rodney King moment, eh?

    Sure, Eastern Washington needs roads and utilities and schools. It makes sense to extract payments for those items in those locations. So why not levy a local gas tax? Let those who want to drive big trucks on over great distances, where it’s for business or recreation pay more to use those roads. That’s where personal choice vs societal obligation comes in. The state build the road to connect the orchard with the processing plant or storage facility but as it get torn up with use, let that cost be borne by those who use it. (I think all gas taxes should be assessed by vehicle weight anyway, no matter where they are driven – http://bit.ly/hynw2O) After all, don’t Metro fares and ferry tickets keep going up? And don’t the majority of ferry and Metro patrons live in those counties that are being played for suckers here?

  7. Frightening to understand that the major metropolitan regions of the U.S. have a huge incentive to demolish social programs at the Federal level and maintain them for their own regions. Surely the liberal people of all these regions are not unaware of the balance. Of course, the imbalance in tax is the result of an unjust imbalance in income and wealth. The struggle is not Dem/Repub, Urban/Rural, State vs State. It is class struggle against a wealthy oligarchy.

  8. OK. Oligarchs enter. Very appropritate since we’re bickering about roads and gas taxes and maybe some monster mobiles tearing up the roads. Exxon, did it really have a windfall 19 billion dollar year wherein they paid no taxes and yet were refunded 119 million dollars? Is this true? If so, how dare we give them such a piddly sum.

  10. No more government handouts to farmers. If they can’t grow food for a price people are willing to pay, they should go out of business. As for the stupid argument about “fixed costs,” the farmers should pay for the infrastructure they need to get their products to their customers.

  11. I am a newcomer to Seattle and lifelong urbanite. However, for this discussion I would like to sit on the fence, if that is allowed. On one hand, the figures presented in the article confirmed a hunch of mine that conservative, rural states benefit from tax dollars more than most of their residents are aware. Also, perhaps like the borders of many African nations, WA’s borders have been drawn fairly arbitrarily and should reflect the geography and culture, perhaps not. However, like many of the problems we are facing today, the question of equity involves complex social-ecological systems that become blurred through the lens of “us vs. them”, as I have read above.

    King County builds sports stadiums with tax dollars, Eastern WA builds long roads that are used by few, the entire WA State economy was built on war and large Federal investments…: multiplying such examples on both sides can only get us so far in better understanding the economic challenges we face. A number of other factors were touched upon in comments above and should be weighed up. For example, rural counties are generally stewards of a large proportion of our green infrastructure (forests, shrub steppe etc.), which provides an essential complement to our “built” infrastructure, and although agriculture makes up a mere 3% of our GDP (or thereabouts), food is arguably its most important component for humans. The western counties also contribute much in value added products and services, but from a historical viewpoint this was almost inevitable, looking at the Counties’ proximity to ports and access to international labor. If we switched the people in King County with those in an eastern county, chances are the cultures would switch over a couple of generations.

    This article is a great way to open the discussion on how the state can eventually get closer to working as an integrated “whole”, for the benefit of everybody. Measures of tax revenues etc. are important, but many others exist. I suggest an article series that begins to explore the many facets of WA’s economy and underlying themes.

  12. #62: Excellent post. I’m a NY descended (and educated) Seattle urbanite, but I grew up in Spokane (b. 1950) and my in-laws are in Okanogan. I know this state from corner to corner. Your observations and analysis are very accurate from my experience.

  13. Want to read some more telling statistics? Check out the % of population employed by a government agency (either city, county, state or federal, as of 2007). In eastern Washington, the winners are: Ferry Co. 63.4%, Pend Oreille 46.2%, Lincoln 52.6%, Whitman 60.3%, Columbia 45.8% and Garfield 70.9%. That’s right – almost seventy one percent of Garfield county has some sort of government job. Which is, amazingly enough, almost identical to their percent of Republican voters.

    In western Washington, the county with the largest percentage of government workers is Kitsap county at 47.3% (think Bremerton shipyards). That’s even more than the Thurston county at 45% with the state capital.

    The county with the smallest percentage of government workers? You guessed it – King county 12.3%.

    So, not only do those idiots in eastern Washington get more in tax money, but a larger percentage of them work for the same government that they want to get rid of.

    Did I mention that they were idiots?

  14. Hey Goldy,you forgot to put the yellow Hammer and Sickle (or yellow Star) on all that redness!!!I’m gonna report your “error” to the Central Committee . . . .To everybody:Sever as many ties with the state government as you can.Sue the mofos in federal court to allow your municipality and/or county to acquire tax autonomy.Don’t expect help from the ACLU,Public Citizen,the National Lawyers Guild,and the Brennan Center;you might need to go it alone with a class- or mass-action lawsuit.

  15. If you live out in one of the less populated counties with, say, only 25 families who farm live there yet 3 major state highways and major electrical grids go thru your county you will divide the cost of those highways and grids between 25 families even though the whole state profits from those highways grids.

    Sounds like lying with numbers to me.

  19. Okay all you anti-Eastern Washington folks. Come live for awhile in the “red” part of the state and see if you can actually find some compassion. If you keep your eyes and hearts open, you’ll find that your stereotypes do not hold, not across the board anyway.

    Keep your eyes and ears open, and you’ll soon discern the fear that underlies so many beliefs and decisions here … of course there is deep fear, this is a land where livelihoods are reliant on diminishing natural resources. Bitch slapping us because our roads cost more per capita than in densely populated areas is not going to resolve anything.

    And sure, a huge percentage of the population here works in government positions. We need the same kind of agencies as more densely populated areas, but fewer people to fill the roles. Or would you argue that we ought not have libraries or snow plows because we our taxes contribute less to the state coffers?

    After paying taxes in King County for 30 years, I now pay them in Ferry County.

    It is “red” over here, but I try to UNDERSTAND why, because these are people, just like in the “blue” part of the state. Mud slinging is not going to change how people vote over here. I’m telling you. Try something else, okay.

  20. @70- Way to miss the point.

    We’re saying STOP VOTING AGAINST YOUR OWN INTERESTS. We’re not saying “No services for you.” We’re saying “Stop trying to cut OUR services and shooting yourself in the foot at the same time.”

  23. I suspect the same numbers would apply to Oregon. We mirror Washington in a lot of ways. Rural (red) Eastern Oregon is about as backwards and red neck as it gets out here in the west. I keep hearing sentiment that we should “cut out the Portland/Salem metro areas” from the rest of the state. Oh yeah, turn rural Oregon into a Republican Nirvana of crumbling roads, falling down schools, with lots of guns and bibles. Maybe we can make a living selling meth from all of our labs to the metro areas.

  24. I see how this propaganda works as my comment from earlier was deleted.
    This comment is not so much as to comment about the subject but about the
    Political views of the editors of this page. I noticed others were gone as well.
    I guess my views were to factual for the folks in denial / leftist.

  25. I see how this propaganda works as my comment from earlier was deleted.
    This comment is not so much as to comment about the subject but about the
    Political views of the editors of this page. I noticed others were gone as well.
    I guess my views were to factual for the folks in denial / leftist.

  27. This is about honesty. The point is that all of us use government services, and that costs money. The difference between the Blue counties and the Reds is that the Blues are honest enough to admit it, while the Reds insist on a myth that we can all be rugged individuals who don’t need anything from anyone else (while actually sucking in far more tax dollars than the blues. That myth is choking off the ability to raise the funds that all of us need. Go ahead and live your red county lifestyle, but please don’t lie about it in a way that hurts all of us.

  28. @77 Yes this whole BLOG SLOG thing is new to me. And my views are definitely not left wing. That happens when you become disillusioned from the political left. You see I used to be a leftist and supported everything that sounded like a good popular thing to do.
    I have spent many hours around your fires. I volunteered and was part of that whole social seen. I studied Carl Marx, etc. while I was still in junior high. After a while I became aware of the disparities and realized that all the talk about equality and justice for all was not really what was happening. I stepped back a moment and was able to see the big picture.

    As I went to the stranger for the first time I discovered that I was going to be just sitting for a L O N G time because I am one of many in Eastern Washington that do not have
    hi-speed as available as folks in the city. Having some computer issues as well does not help.

  29. “Had King County’s school districts been funded proportionate to what King County taxpayers put into state coffers, our schools would have received an additional one billion dollars from the state in 2008; now that’s the kind of data point, if properly understood, that could erode local, blue-­county support for statewide solutions.”

    “Which perhaps explains why so few lawmakers seem to want these data points properly understood.”

    Is “had” different than IF and doesn’t the way this is phrased sound like King County is getting shorted additional one billion dollars or perhaps the Red counties are getting one billion dollars they should not. This Data point the author is so proud of is not even a data manipulation but a totally bogus stretch of the imagination.
    And then again how much is the Growth Management Act (GMA)costing taxpayers as a flawed effort to try and do a good thing?

    A word of wisdom from a red county don’t let this red county /haring distract us from the real money suck, the (GMA)

  30. As a memorable professor said, “Subsidies have worked well to keep farmers barefoot, pregnant and in the corner.” And Americans spend far less on food ( less than 10% of income) than anyone else in the world.

    Also, the majority of the Farm Bill funds are Food Stamps. Convenient little facts to forget while you’re jaunting around Seattle.

  32. Sooo Help me out here…
    Im look for similar info for other states (mine, in particular…)
    Is this census information? and how do I apply to my, and surrounding states? Thanks for the help. TS

  35. Yakima County has a population that is nearly 50% Hispanic, and Hispanics there most likely make up the majority of DSHS spending. On the whole, these people are NOT likely Republican voters. The argument that these are the people voting to cut taxes/restrict spending, while receiving tons of DSHS dollars, is overly simplistic.

  36. The article’s intent to call out Easterners who want to “bite the hand that feeds them” is fair and eye-opening, but does not highlight one specific truism often enough.

    Those counties create less money than King-Sno-Pierce Counties, but have the same needs as the big counties. It’s no wonder the smaller counties have larger percentages of people in government jobs. Would you rather close the library or PD?

    King-Sno-Pierce counties actually produce big quantities of exportable goods. Microsoft and Amazon come immediately to mind.

    The arguments about education are both fair but misleading. Yes, it costs a lot to educate kids. But there are more kids in the more populated counties and more unfunded educational infrastructure in those more populated counties. If education was funded properly statewide, the numbers per-kid should even out.

    I take offense to the shit being thrown on farmers. I agree subsidies are questionable in a free market society, but a big part of the subsidies are because of government regulations to keep food prices down. Lift the regulations, kill the subsidies — and be prepared for a big sticker shock at the local grocery. For those who believe life is too expensive already, be prepared to ante up more money to your local food bank — like we should — or accept that more people will go hungry. It’s difficult. Oh, and more people in both the West and the East will need more food stamps, by the way.

    Why the hell should we import food in mass quantities when we grow it here – the shipping cost is ineffective.

    For the people who talk trash about choosing to live in a rural area like it is wrong: fuck you. I live in the rural town where I work. Would you rather I lived in an urban society but clogged I-5 and polluted more to drive to work? That would be my situation. No reliable bus service out here, so the car is my only way to go.

    And to the people who grind their teeth at the backwardness of eastern Washington: mixed feelings here, but instead of attacking, enlighten them.

    I agree most with #62 and #70. I’m not sure if #80 can back up the facts, but I’m aware of how the GMA restricts and fights urban sprawl into the rural boonies.

    And when you see my screen name, remember kids, Libertarians are not Tea Partiers. I’d be happy to debate that, but the common TP’s wacky anti-gay and rightwing social views go right against the LP.

  39. Aren’t farmers paid to not grow food in the USA?How much arable land is now paved over?How much of it is used to grow food for non-human animals?Biofuels?Christmas trees?How many tens of billions of pounds of edible food were thrown away by Americans in 2010?Socialism would pay for itself,unlike intra-species parasitism! (L)

  42. @82 & @89
    Not wishing to dominate your this SLOG,
    I have chosen to step back and see if folks can be civil.
    Thank you for being that. I have gotten a better understanding of this process, reformatted HD, and busy doing other things, thank you.

    @89 The pressures that the political left place on rural counties are not heavenly.
    I would rather live in what you perceive as hell and live in truth than be guided by the misleading information that comes via the leftist radio, publications etc. in your region.
    I would not caricaturize living in a pear pressure state of existence as being heavenly.
    (I have friends in Seattle and know what folks still have to deal with along with the responsibilities of life. I feel compassion for you folks in that.)
    I have stated this as looking at it from denial. I would indeed find THAT boring.
    Living truth, as is demonstrated in nature and much more abundant in rural counties and slower than what you experience most of the time in higher populated counties but I and others prefer it. Something else that has been brought to the attn. Of folks in Ferry County that might want to be considered is the signs that have been seen by several in Western WA. ( Go to Ferry County and Live on DSHS ) We don’t care much for that either. Another consideration about DSHS is the Report from the WA Dept. of Revenue stating that DSHS employees have over paid them selves approx. $600,000.00 over past years and it is not expected to ever be recovered. Along with the GMA $ suck the Government employees need to stop it as well.

  44. @93 & @94: All I’m saying is for anybody–east or west—to stop shooting down government services they rely on, only to stupidly whine about losing money later.

    Okay. I’m done.

  45. @93 As in all attempts to restrict the growth of bureaucrats, public services are always cut first. This brings about pressure on the common person so they can leverage their socialist agenda.
    These include the DSHS etc. There will always be whiners anywhere and I am not one. I and many others in Ferry County use native plants for good health. In Rural eastern WA mountain people that own land are generally much more independent and self-reliant. Mostly we just want to be left alone. The folks that are reliant on social services are generally new-comers and ironically folks that lean to the left and vote along with you folks anyway.

  46. @95
    Services you don’t like us getting OK.

    Schools; Educating , and preparing the young for life. also indoctrinating them to be linear thinking socialist supporting that agenda. More Bricks in the wall. Along with the school staff that support your vote.

    Hospitals; That are entirely too expensive keeping up with your urbane socialist system.

    Roads; The county road department comes along and tares up the roads. They plow the snow for the new-comers that pay too much for land, driving up our taxes.

    Agencies; That tell us that we can’t use our land.

    I guess I might be missing something here, care to enlighten me ?

  47. First,@92:He was askin’ for it,wasn’t he?;D.Second,@94:Grammatical legerdemain!You’re the one who overdosed on blue pills,foolishman!

  48. @95 It seems only fair to mention that if anyone was to whine from rural counties about the reactionary left cutting back on services it would be only fair as not one comment has been given to viable options or real $ sucking, I have pointed out. Piece out.
    @98 Neo’s Red pill or blue pill reference was to the life that is an illusion in the Matrix. A little movie before your time I guess.
    You seem more interested in the BS games as to “getting someone” or seeing grammatical errors, than considering what is being communicated. I will mention a lyric sang by a black man that I have a great amount of respect for, being Jimi Hendrix, particularly the song
    “All along the Watchtower”.
    (“There are many here among us Who feel that life is but a joke”
    “But you and I, we’ve been through that And this is not our fate
    So let us not talk falsely now The hour is getting late).
    So throw out your little quips and don’t bother having anything really substantive to contribute, It won’t bother me. I am finished tilting at windmills. Another reference you probably don’t understand.
    I will not be back for any more of your silliness.
    Piece out.

  49. really….this is dumb, you do realize that even when they do vote “republican” it doesn’t matter because the majority of our state population is democrat…so how they vote is irrelevant. as well as the fact that because of the fact that there is more money being brought in the less you would get back, its the same as when you do your own taxes; the more you make the less you get back. so the less people the more it seems they get. Also to raise taxes for the purpose of “fixing roads” that should only need it once every ten years, because lack of use, is just a moron call and anyone who would vote for something like that is dumb. so that’s why they don’t. they are actually saving money for the state and isn’t that what your trying to say here….ya I think so

  50. The socialism continues. The Texas drought will cause most dryland farmers to plow their crops under. They’re ok with that since they have crop insurance. Guess who subsidizes the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Right!

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