As Gov. Gregoire prepared to unveil her latest round of painful budget cutbacks last week, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Teaching and Learning Division wound up a two-day meeting in Renton at a cost of $20,000 for food, lodging, airplane, and auto expenses. Though little known, the governor’s much-publicized spending hold has a loophole: Agencies can apply for and receive exemptions for purchases, job hiring, and travel, among other costs. And there are a lot of exemptions—millions of dollars worth.

Jason Mercier of the watchdog Washington Policy Center waded through the latest 84-page exemptions list and highlighted a few that caught his eye. There’s the computer upgrade by the Department of Labor & Industries, for example. L&I’s policy is to regularly “refresh” its computer software—in this case, 733 staff notebook computers. The agency wants to update to Windows 7 and other newer programs at a cost of $680,000. If it does not follow its upgrading “model,” says L&I, the “downtime and impact on productivity,” as well as security, will be costly, and—since some computers have already been refreshed—leave the agency with a “mixed support environment” of different operating systems.

L&I figured it would cost $587,000 to defer the upgrade, based on the projected costs of doing the work later rather than now. Thus the difference between waiting and going ahead was only $93,000, and those were the only two options, L&I said. Ultimately, the agency got the exemption—part of a three-year leasing program costing $1.8 million. Where but in government does it cost almost as much to do nothing as something?

Other exempted purchases include five new trucks at $30,000 each for the Fish & Wildlife Department. They’re needed because an older vehicle “creates unsafe working conditions” for officers, says F&W. It didn’t say how old the “several” vehicles to be replaced are.