Not-so-diplomatic behavior during special session

The first week of the Legislature’s special session was a fairly busy one, but not in the way you might expect. While the Senate and the House of Representatives did not come into regular session for a single minute all week, there was a fair amount of activity outside the Senate chamber – and some less-than-diplomatic behavior from our state’s chief executive. This week’s report will focus on the new budget proposal that is before the Legislature and some of the reaction to it.

After I attended today’s pro forma session (meaning the gavel is dropped to open the day’s session, then dropped again to adjourn it to a later time – a formality only) it was time to get on the road for home. A few hours earlier I’d taken a call from two of the editors at the Spokane paper, who were interested in my take on things here at the Capitol, and our conversation naturally touched on the weather. It’s rained plenty in Olympia this week (even some snow Tuesday morning), and the editors said it has been coming down in Spokane too. Considering how dry things have been in Ritzville, I’m hoping some of that rain made it to the farm too! For a dryland wheat farmer, there’s really no such thing as bad rain.

Bipartisan Senate coalition presents new, stronger plan…

Two weeks ago a bipartisan coalition of senators formed to bring an operating-budget proposal forward and pass it so the Senate could finally begin budget negotiations with the House of Representatives.

None of us portrayed that budget as a perfect plan, but we knew it was a far sight better than what the House Democrats had approved. On March 8, the final day of the 60-day regular legislative session, the House lobbed a new plan over to the Senate. It was pretty much a retread of the Senate Democrat proposal, which had gone nowhere the week before (and was the reason our coalition’s alternative became the official Senate position), so it went nowhere as well.

That brings us to yesterday, when members of our bipartisan coalition (including all three of its Senate Democrat members) joined to present a new and improved proposal and call on the House to start serious negotiations toward a final budget agreement.

When I say “new and improved,” that’s not a knock on the budget we adopted March 3. It was a good start, but like I say, we knew it was more than anything a starting position for negotiations, and a way to prove that a balanced, responsible state budget could be written without new taxes or major accounting gimmicks.

The first Senate budget would have reduced K-12 education funding by about 1/4 of 1 percent (out of about $15.9 billion that goes to public schools in our state, to put it in perspective), without taking dollars out of classrooms – the changes would have been at the state education-office level. The new proposal makes no K-12 reductions at all from the budget adopted in 2011.

With two four-year public universities in our legislative district, I am glad the new proposal also maintains funding for higher education at its present level.

In all, the new $30.7 billion Senate proposal raises spending by about 3/10 of 1 percent from the original plan, yet requires no new taxes and would leave a reserve of $437 million – not as much as I would like, but still well ahead of what the latest House budget proposes.

When comparing the new Senate proposal with the budget passed by the House, one thing needs to be considered above all else: the Senate budget has the best chance by far of being sustainable during the rest of this budget cycle. In fact, it’s possible based on projections that the next Legislature could have about a half-billion dollars left from this biennium when it begins working on the budget for 2013-15.

The House budget, meanwhile, would have the next Legislature coming in to face a $2.1 billion shortfall as it puts the next two-year budget together, according to the non-partisan Washington Research Council. I’m tired of seeing deficit after deficit, because that just means another round of threats to K-12 and higher education and our most vulnerable residents.

This new bipartisan Senate plan is an even better position from which to start negotiating with the House. Now we need to those negotiations to get going, so this overtime session can be brought to an end.

The governor responds with a temper tantrum

Did our governor forget she’s in charge of the executive branch but not the legislative branch?

You might think so from the public meltdown she seems to have had over the actions taken by our bipartisan Senate coalition.

Here’s how budget negotiations should go: the House Democrats have a budget in hand, the bipartisan Senate coalition has a new budget proposal in hand (and if we need to make it official, we can pass it the same way we did March 3). The representatives of those two sides need to get together in a room and start hammering out their differences. If you want to bring a staff person or two along, fine, but there’s no need for anyone from the governor’s office to be involved, nor any legislator who is not directly associated with one of those two budgets. In other words, if you aren’t a negotiator keep out of the room.

Trouble is, the Speaker of the House must not trust his own budget leader to be alone in the same room with our Senate coalition budget leader, because such a meeting has yet to happen. Talk about keeping a tight grip.

The governor has injected herself into the process, too, even though her only official duty is to sign the budget (or at least the portions she supports).

She’s had the legislative-caucus leaders in for meeting after meeting, even though they’re not negotiators – but only yesterday morning, after word of the new Senate budget proposal traveled around the Capitol, did she finally have the budget writers come and meet in her office. That doesn’t count as “negotiating” in my book.

After our coalition unveiled its new proposal yesterday, the governor reacted about as well as my young grandson might if I lift him off of the pony before his “ride” is through.

I won’t go into all the details of her threats, but the idea that she would cancel bill-signing ceremonies or veto bills just to “get their attention” (meaning legislators’ attention) seems about as petty as you can get.

I was going to stay at the Capitol until later in the afternoon because the governor was supposed to sign Senate Bill 6208 – not a major bill, but something I sponsored on behalf of our grain-elevator folks. The travel plans changed when my bill was pulled from the signing schedule. In fact, a list of about 30 bills she was going to sign just got whittled down to a half-dozen, all of them Democrat bills, since yesterday.

The grain-elevator bill still will become law without her signature; however, shouldn’t we expect more from the governor than to slight state troopers and the agriculture industry and others who might like to have her signature on bills that concern them, just because I sponsored those measures?

If the governor wants to help she should stop the public temper tantrums and instead use her bully pulpit to get the budget leaders for the House Democrats and the bipartisan Senate coalition into the same room – without anyone else present who might want to influence the negotiations. Those face-to-face meetings need to happen for a final agreement to emerge, and by Monday the special session will already be more than a quarter of the way through.