Opinion - Cutting access is too expensive

Washington lawmakers are still faced with a $5 billion bukdget shortfall. They are scrambling to cut that amount from state spending.

Increasing efficiency, taking on unions, revising retirement programs, cutting the multiple layers of state management and sizing down the bureaucracies are tough but logical places for savings.

The legislature is looking instead for easier ways to balance the budget or, more correctly, ways to use the budget crisis to justify self-serving changes. As a result, some long held beliefs are being cast aside and some strange new attitudes are emerging.

One such idea...