Senator Sheldon’s Legislative Survey

Senator Tim Sheldon (Democrat-Potlatch) represents Washington’s 35th legislative district in the state senate. He’s also holds a full-time elected post as a Mason County Commissioner. The legislative survey from Senator Sheldon that I got in the mail yesterday made me wonder if he is on top of things.

The biggest problem with the so-called Budget Shortfall Survey is that his constituents received it well past the half-way point of the current 60-day legislative session. By far the most important issue on the legislative agenda this year is dealing with a fiscal crisis brought on by falling revenues. So why is the senator asking us what we think now?

By the time the responses to Senator Sheldon’s survey are mailed in and tabulated, the senate will be debating its budget on the senate floor and the budget will be well along toward passage. Senator Sheldon isn’t on the budget committee, but after 15 years in the senate he should understand the budget schedule. In fact the budget would already be out of committee except the budget writers have delayed it while waiting for a miracle uptick in revenue in tomorrow’s quarterly revenue forecast.

Senator Sheldon didn’t date the survey’s cover letter. While the survey was probably mailed late last week, you can’t tell when it was sent out because, maddeningly, it has an undated postage-paid permit instead of a USPS postmark.

The survey was likely prepared at the beginning of the session because it refers to the old $1.5 billion estimate as the revenue shortfall. Since then the state has discovered a $200 million windfall in revenue due to decreased caseloads in the social services areas and a lower demand for education dollars in some districts. There’s still a huge deficit to deal with, but Senator Sheldon’s survey, which primarily asks for input on the budget, now overstates the problem.

Questions 5 and 6 of the survey are about legalizing same-sex marriage. The questions have been overtaken by events as the governor signed the same-sex marriage bill into law yesterday. To his credit the senator voted his own mind on the bill instead of doing what is politically correct and toeing the Democratic Party line. But it makes you wonder why he is asking what his constituents think when his mind was already set on how he was going to vote.

So give Senator Sheldon an A for sending out a survey and an F for bad timing. It is possible that the survey was held up at the state printing office or that his staff forgot to mail it. Still how many surveys does the senator ordinarily need to keep track of? The answer is zero most of the time and one late one currently.