Banning plastic bags, gay marriage and education the focus despite financial crisis

We’re one week into the 2012 legislative session, which is scheduled to last 60 days, and so far it’s reminding me a lot of the 17 days we spent in “special” session last month. Keep reading for why that’s not a good thing.

I hope you and your family had a safe and merry Christmas and holiday season. Dad and I spent a few days together on a trip last week, I enjoyed seeing my young grandson make out like a bandit when it came to Christmas presents, and this weekend I’ll join a former House Republican colleague in an effort to thin the population of ducks around his place. That’s my favorite kind of bird watching!

A slow start to closing the state budget gap

During December’s special legislative session the Senate didn’t work much beyond three days a week; the Senate Ways and Means Committee on which I serve spent more time taking public testimony about the governor’s budget proposal than discussing reforms that could save more money.

Sure, the Legislature ended up closing the budget gap by about 25 percent, or $480 million, but that was mostly on paper – things like eliminating unfilled positions in the Department of Ecology, which aren’t even close to my definition of reform.

Considering that the state budget is still about $1.5 billion out of whack, I would have expected Ways and Means to meet at least once this week. It didn’t; in fact, I think the only time I was in the same room with the Senate Democrat budget leader was when we were interviewed first thing Monday by TVW, the state’s public affairs network. We simply cannot have more of the leisurely pace we saw last month, so I hope next week is far more productive.

I realize the governor has dangled the tax-increase carrot in front of the majority party, but that should be a last resort, not a distraction. We should be working hard to reprioritize existing tax dollars and adopt reforms to stretch the money even farther – then we just might be able to close the budget gap without even talking about new revenue.

‘Approving gay marriage and banning plastic bags’

A constituent, Chris, sent me an email Wednesday night with his take on the situation at the Capitol. Here are a couple of sentences from it:

“We have a $1 billion plus budget deficit and the best we citizens can expect from our legislators is approving gay marriage and banning plastic bags…What a sorry state of affairs at the state.”

I suspect many in our district and across our state are as frustrated as Chris, and as I said above, hopefully the first week of this regular session wasn’t indicative of what the remaining eight or so weeks will produce

Incidentally, the plastic bag-ban legislation that received a public hearing before the Senate Environment Committee on Wednesday is a holdover from a year ago, introduced by the same north-of-Seattle senator who proposes clamping down on charitable car washes – and if you’d rather not ban plastic bags, she has also proposed taxing plastic bags instead.

The bag-ban bill went nowhere last year, and I can only guess it received a public hearing already this session because a different senator now chairs that committee.

As for same-sex marriage, I find it interesting that a “senior regional field organizer” from the national, pro-gay Human Rights Campaign reportedly arrived in our state in October, and within three months, our governor’s long-standing resistance to same-sex marriage had crumbled.

Since 2009, Washington law has granted same-sex couples the same rights as married couples, yet the governor says our state is still being discriminatory – apparently because, as she put it, same-sex couples are denied “the meaning of marriage.” How does that qualify as discrimination?

Also, why the sudden push to legalize same-sex marriage, and more specifically, to have the Legislature rather than the people vote on it? All I can figure is that someone realized a new governor might prefer that the question go to the ballot, where even those who publicly profess support would have the option of privately saying “no, the state has done all it needs to do.”

In the 10 days since the governor announced her support for legalizing same-sex marriage, my office has received well over 100 messages by phone or e-mail on this subject, and the vast majority don’t side with her.

The Legislature has many tasks ahead in the next few months – such as the budget, education, transportation and health care. We need to focus our energy on these issues, which affect a far larger number of the people in the 9th District and statewide. Even the capital city’s newspaper, usually a loyal supporter of the governor, wonders if her push for legalizing same-sex marriage will turn out to be a distraction.

Governor introduces transportation package

I don’t have to be on the transportation committee to understand the situation our state is in: lower demand for fuel (for reasons you can guess) has reduced the level of gas-tax revenue that supports our highway system, meaning some road projects won’t get off the drawing board.

Therefore, it wasn’t a huge surprise that in her state-of-the-state speech to the Legislature on the session’s second day, Gov. Gregoire announced a plan to raise $3.7 billion over 10 years to service existing transportation projects and another $8 billion for new projects.

She figures the $3.7 billion would be generated by a long list of new taxes – or fees, it’s hard to know which at this point: $1.50 assessed on each barrel of oil produced in Washington, $5 on each studded tire sold in Washington, $100 on an electric vehicle, and more. Cities and counties that have formed “local transportation districts” could even charge their own local excise tax. The governor didn’t say where the additional $8 billion would come from.

Naturally, the governor’s plan doesn’t appear to include any roadwork in our legislative district, even though it’s the size of Connecticut.

The skeptic in me wonders if any funds raised would actually be dedicated to transportation projects. Under the state constitution, only state gas-tax proceeds must be dedicated to roads, and the governor sure isn’t proposing a higher gas tax – at least not yet.

Put more into K-12 schools, state’s high court tells Legislature

Last week the state Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of McCleary v. Washington. The issue in the case, brought by the McCleary family of Jefferson County and others, was whether the state is complying with its constitutional mandate to “make ample provision” for the education of all children within our state.

Here is what the court found:

• The state has not complied with its constitutional duty to make ample provision for education. In so many words, a majority of the justices agreed that if the Legislature were to fully fund the provisions of 2009’s House Bill 2261 – a price tag that could reach $8 billion – the court would find it adequate.

• The court interpreted Article IX, Section 1 of the state Constitution as conferring a right for children in Washington to an amply funded education. According to the court, the word “ample” means “fully, sufficient, and considerably more than just adequate,” and the funding for it must be by means of “dependable and regular tax sources.”

• The court chose to retain jurisdiction over the case in order to monitor and facilitate the state’s progress in amply funding education. It’s not standard practice for a court to say it will monitor progress made toward its ruling, but that’s what happened here. The state was given until 2018 to make good on the court ruling, so we’re talking six years of oversight by the justices.

Gov. Gregoire said this week that the ruling makes the case for passing a sales tax increase and dedicating at least a portion of the funds to education. Others are advocating we make reforms to our education system and then make education funding a state spending priority, rather than asking voters to “buy it back” with a tax increase.

Redistricting Commission approves new congressional, legislative district

After months of meeting to negotiate, draw and redraw new legislative and congressional district boundaries following the 2010 U.S. Census, the state Redistricting Commission barely met its Jan. 1 deadline for agreeing on a new pair of plans.

The new legislative and congressional plans automatically take effect in mid-February unless the Legislature makes changes to them before that time. However, no one’s representation will change until after the November general election.

Federally speaking, our district will remain mostly in the 5th Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers) but also in the 4th Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Doc Hasting).

The significant change for us is at the legislative level. Our district will include less of Spokane County and more of Franklin County, including part of Pasco. In terms of area, ours will be the third-largest legislative district in the state.

Go online for more about the 2012 session

Once a week, as my committee and office calendar permit, I videotape a report on the session’s progress. These “Senate Sessions” are made available to local-access television channels serving our district (perhaps you’ve seen them before on the Spokane and Pullman channels).

I also encourage you to visit the TVW web site, www.TVW.org, for comprehensive coverage of the goings-on at the state Capitol.

Earlier this week TVW unveiled a new service that makes it even easier to follow issues important to you. This new service, called SCOUT, allows you to identify those issues and have video content and legislative documents on those issues delivered directly to your inbox.

Anything TVW broadcasts or webcasts concerning those issues will be queued up and ready for you to watch and read. This gives the public the ability to quickly and easily follow the issues you care most about. You may access the new SCOUT service at http://scout.tvw.org/.