The Paper Blizzard That Ate Washington's Budget

OLYMPIA, Feb. 17.—[Special.]—The senate appropriations committee today, in recommending the passage of a bill setting aside $52,000 to pay the deficiency in the public printing fund, calls attention to glaring defects in the law controlling such expenditures, as well as flagrant abuses which have arisen through the laws. In referring to lavish dissipation of the funds the committee does not wish to be understood as charging any official with intentional extravagance. No limitations or restrictions are, by law, placed upon any state officer, board or commission, as to the amount or character of printing they may demand or procure. The state printer is virtually compelled to do all work ordered upon requisition made, hence it need create no surprise that we are confronted with an enormous deficiency for which crude laws are primarily responsible. Cheaper paper should be used, and fewer journals of each house of the legislature printed. Fifteen hundred copies of each volume of supreme court decisions are printed, while only 500 copies can be used.

A serious leakage of the printing fund lies in the unrestricted, verbose reports of many state officials, boards and commissions. In many instances these reports are drawn out beyond all reason, no effort whatever being made to condense facts and figures.

Money was wasted in reprinting reports of coal mine inspectors and in publishing a directory of notaries public. Five thousand copies of the report of the secretary of state were printed, while only 500 are necessary. The adjutant general's report, a mass of dry militia figures, is now in press and will cost $2,700. The report is of no value. The report of the university, land and building commission is another example of multiplicity of words. The report of the school for defective youth, while in the main concise, enlightens the public by a publication of the deaf and dumb alphabet. The superintendent of public instruction is required by law to publish in his report a directory of school district officers in the state. This directory comprises seventy-eight pages of his current report. The total volume of the various reports could be reduced one-half without loss of accuracy or the omission of facts germane to the subjects treated. Material costing one-half as much would serve every legitimate purpose, for it is a notorious fact that tons of these reports accumulate as the years pass and are piled away in dusty rooms to be sold to junk dealers.

Secretary Weir says that the official reports of both auditor and secretary of state called attention to extravagance in ordering printing and defects in the law, and both recommended the creating of an advisory board to control amounts and say what shall or shall not be printed; that the report of the secretary of state will not cost $5,000, but about $3,000 instead; that this report contains, besides such matters as are required by law or deemed necessary to be reported with reference to the office itself, also the report of the insurance department, quite an important department, and the reports of the coal mine inspectors and of the harbor line commission, required by law to be in the secretary's report.