By Kris Johnson and Steve Mullin
Imagine winning the lottery tomorrow. You'd have $10 million to spend on whatever you wanted in an instant.
Of course, the prudent thing would be to get a financial adviser and plan for the future. Ensure you have a strong foundation and adequate savings, then decide what you can splurge on. This scenario is not unlike the position our state finds itself in after years of economic recovery and expansion.
Economic and tax revenue growth in Washington state has been extraordinary over the last decade.
So much so that state and local tax growth in Washington was the highest in the nation from 2015 to 2016. The state expects tax collections will top $50 billion for the first time during the next two-year budget cycle. That's $4 billion more than the last cycle and nearly $11 billion more than it had in 2015-17.
Washington has leveraged this growth to invest in important programs, dramatically increasing state funding for public education, for example.
But we need to recognize that this lottery-like period of growth is far from normal. And it has come at a time when Washington also steadily increased the cost of doing business here... |
