Facing a $3 billion budget gap next year, Gov. Chris Gregoire recently announced a renewed initiative to streamline state government. The governor created a 32-person panel to scour state agencies for efficiencies vowing, “There are no sacred cows.”

Surprisingly, she suggested that our scandal-laden ferry system could be sold back to the private sector. In the wake of a high-profile investigation by KING 5 News that revealed widespread abuses by unionized state ferry workers, Gregoire raised the prospect of privatizing the state ferry system. She pointed to British Columbia’s BC Ferry Corporation as a possible model. But this “private” ferry company is not quite private. Its sole shareholder is the British Columbia government.

Over the years, problems with ferry worker unions and state regulators put Washington state into the ferry business. A strike in 1935 forced the Kitsap County Transportation Company to close, leaving only the Black Ball Line. Toward the end of the 1940s, the Black Ball Line wanted to increase its fares to compensate for increased wage demands from the ferry workers unions, but the state refused to allow this, forcing the Black Ball Line to shut down. At that point, the state took over the ferry system.

Continues here: »www.columbian.com/news/2010/jul/···cing-un/