On the eve of the legislature’s special session, the Washington Community Action Network releases its latest research on how state budget cuts disproportionately affect the state’s racial minorities.
The quarter of Washingtonians (1.7 million people) who are people of color continue to absorb the brunt of the state’s budget cutbacks and a regressive tax system.
Those are the findings of the Washington Community Action Network’s 40-page Facing Race report released Wednesday at press events throughout the state, including Spokane.
Students protesting state education cuts last winter.
The WCAN study is rooted in a broad analysis of Washington’s deteriorating social safety net as reflected in the cuts to the state’s 2011-2013 budget. It gathers its focus by looking more closely at income, employment, poverty and health outcome trends among the state’s racial majority and minority groups. In short, because Washington’s communities of color were already disproportionately more vulnerable to the economic downturn than were white communities, they continue to be more deeply affected by a rapidly unraveling social safety net.
“In reading this document and through my own personal experience it is clear that the [state] budget cuts’ greatest impact will affect low-income, elderly, children, the mentally ill and people of color,” said Debra Reed, a member of the Spokane NAACP chapter. “What I would like for us to leave here today understanding is that this a human race issue,” she added. These cuts will not only impact the disenfranchise, low-income and people of color; these cuts will impact people we know, our friends, families and neighbors. If you have not already been impacted by this economical break down, just turn and look at your neighbor and if they don’t have a story to tell, I know they know someone who does.”
State Senator Majority Leader Lisa Brown was also present at the press event Wednesday in Spokane.
“The social safety net is about all of us,” Sen. Brown said. Everybody knows somebody who is or will be receiving support at some point in their life, as a child, a student or a senior.”
Washington CAN is the state’s largest grassroots community organization and the report released today was endorsed by 65 other state organizations.
Among the key findings from the report are:
· Cuts made to Basic Health and community clinics will make it harder for communities of color and low-income families to receive affordable health care which will lead to increased disparities in health.
· Over $8 million cut from interpreter services means that jobs will be lost for interpreters and that families will not be able to communicate with their doctors.
· Cuts made to Home Care resulted in an average 10% reduction in personal care hours. People of color are 58% more likely than whites to rely on home care services. Cuts to Home Care also resulted in jobs lost and wages reduced for home care workers, 30% of whom are people of color.
· $5 million cut from Refugee Employment Services impacts the ability of thousands of people of color to participate fully in Washington’s society and economy.
· $214.7 million cut from Class Size Reduction will lead to swelling class sizes, making it more difficult for students of color to get the support they need to succeed academically and exacerbating already existing racial disparities in health.
The analysis released today does not include an assessment of the approximate $2 billion in additional state spending cuts that Washington Governor Chris Gregoire announced earlier this week. But the report does touch on both the deficiency in state revenues and the regressive nature of the state’s tax system. As Governor Gregoire pursues new sources of revenue, Washington CAN has joined with the Washington state Budget and Policy Center in arguing for a fundamental overhaul in the way the state collects taxes.
“The progressive revenue movement absorbed a huge blow on Nov. 2, 2010,” the reports authors noted, “when Washington voters overwhelmingly rejected initiative 1098—which would have created a graduated income tax affecting only individuals making $200,000 or more and couples making $400,000 or more.
“Voters also approved Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1053, which requires a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature or a simple majority of voters at the ballot box to raise taxes.
“Finally, voters’ approval of Initiative 1107 rejected a tax levied by the Legislature on pop, candy, bottled water and certain processed foods. While the tax is widely viewed as highly regressive, it will cost the state $272 million in revenue over three years.
“The discussion is a complicated on for people of color, as revenue is sorely needed to prevent cuts to vital programs from which these communities benefit. But because the single most powerful lever legislators have to raise revenue—the sales tax—would negatively impact low- and middle-income people most, communities of color stand to lose even more.”
One of the eye-opening findings in the report is that, because of income disparity and the regressive nature of the state sales tax, the poorest 20% of Washingtonians pay 17 percent of their incomes in state taxes, while the wealthiest one percent of state residents pay less than three percent of their incomes in state taxes.”
Washington CAN’s focus on how state budget cuts are affecting people of color has grown out of the network’s direct involvement with the day-to-day experiences of communities of color in Washington, said Rachael DeCruz, the organization’s communications coordinator and one of the report’s authors.
“We think more and more drastic attention needs to be brought to bear on this subject,” she said, “because a lot of people are uncomfortable or don’t like to think or talk about this issue in terms of race.”
—Tim Connor
