The Spokesman Review is among the growing ranks of newspapers impatiently calling for Governor Gregoire and the Legislature to trim the fat from overly generous state worker salaries and benefits before sticking taxpayers with higher taxes.  The entire editorial is worth reading, but The Hammer particularly likes this statement about the need to reexamine state workers’ sweetheart health insurance deal:

“Raising taxes on Washingtonians, especially those who have no health insurance, cannot be justified without more concessions from state workers.”

The SR is right—state workers and their labor union bosses become apoplectic at the mere suggestion of forcing state workers to pick up a greater share of the tab for their health insurance premiums.  State workers currently contribute a paltry 12% of their premium tab, while the state pays 88%.  Meanwhile, private sector workers lucky enough to receive health insurance benefits from their employer pay an average of 24%.

The Seattle Times editorial writer and self-proclaimed “cranky taxpayer” Kate Riley, who has been dogging the state’s refusal to share some of the sacrifices private sector employers have had to make (such as eliminating health insurance coverage for their workers, or laying them off), called Gregoire on her double talk on the issue in a blog post earlier this week. 

Riley posted two video clips of Gregoire addressing the state employee health insurance issue with two very different messages.  Speaking to an audience of labor union hacks at a Washington State Labor Council event last month, Gregoire denounced calls for state workers to pay a higher portion of their health insurance premiums, declaring such suggestions “disgusted” her.

But in an interview this week, Gregoire sang a different tune, saying she is “prepared to open up the issue” of making state workers pay more for their Cadillac health insurance.  She even goes as far as to say she has been trying to work with the state employee union to negotiate such change, but the union refuses to budge.  She simpers that without the union’s agreement to renegotiate state workers’ health benefits, or the Legislature stepping in and providing her with “a way forward,” there is just nothing more she can do.

My how the story has changed.  Last month such talk was “disgusting,” and this month it is the unreasonable union holding things up.

Of course, the truth is Gregoire doesn’t need the green light from the union, nor does she need the Legislature, to reopen state worker contracts.  Obviously she will get neither. 

Gregoire has the authority to take action and do what a governor is supposed to do—lead—on this issue.  But relying on actions she knows will never come from unions or legislators, while pretending those are her only options, provides a convenient (although not believable) excuse to do nothing.  Inaction is a form of action, and as Winston Churchill said, “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”