Legislative Commentary

Anyone who wonders why our Senate majority is making a big deal about holding state agencies accountable simply needs to read a news report from Friday, headlined “Western State psychiatric hospital overpays doctor almost $72,000.”

Western State is the counterpart of Medical Lake’s Eastern State Hospital, the two mental hospitals run by the state Department of Social and Health Services. The Pierce County facility already is the subject of one of the several mismanagement scandals going on across state government, after federal investigators found safety violations that placed patients at risk and threatened to cut off millions in Medicare and Medicaid funds.

DSHS is among state government’s problem agencies, a list that includes the Health Care Authority and the Department of Corrections; its well-known deficiencies include a chronic inability to protect children who are under state supervision.

The point is this: Every dollar that is wasted, through overpayments or otherwise, is a dollar that cannot be put toward state government’s priorities, starting with education. DSHS, DOC and HCA are in dire need of reform, yet Governor Inslee has tolerated their poor performance.

You may remember how angry he got last month when the Senate stepped in to relieve the secretary of transportation a month ago, in an effort to improve that agency’s management of tax dollars. As I’ve said before, if the governor can’t hold his agencies accountable, someone else needs to.

This coming Thursday is not only the scheduled end of the 2016 legislative session. It also will be the one-year anniversary of the Senate vote to authorize WSU’s establishment of a medical school, an achievement for which my dear, late friend President Elson Floyd will always be remembered. Where has the time gone?

Session and budget update: Big decisions still ahead


Friday was the 54th day of the 60-day session and brought another deadline, this time for the full Senate to vote on bills passed by the House of Representatives. We worked and voted into the night fo three days, passing a total of 142 House bills this week before Friday’s 5 p.m. cutoff.

As a conservative I tend to believe that the fewer laws we create, the better. Having said that, the House bills we passed are generally non-controversial, although some of the opposition Democrats still managed to make a fuss about common-sense changes, such as allowing counties to have more authority over small community-water systems and making it easier to create access within shoreline zones for people with disabilities.

Where does that leave us, with adjournment just around the corner? Here are some of the major decisions left to be made:

Supplemental capital budget – the Senate’s proposal is great for schools, makes major progress on supporting mental-health treatment facilities, and protects support for environmental-cleanup projects.


Supplemental transportation budget – the Senate plan includes an increase in funding, thanks to a federal infusion of money, that allows more road-improvement projects and other changes to complement the new transportation package adopted in 2015.


Supplemental operating budget – budget negotiators are talking but House Democrats have yet to give up on big new taxes to support a lot of new spending; the Senate plan is a true supplemental budget, because it balances within the available revenue and does not make the sort of policy changes that should be limited to the years when we develop new budgets from scratch.


Bill to keep public charter schools open – the Senate approved Senate Bill 6194 on the 10th day of the session, yet a public hearing on that bill did not occur in the House until the 40th day, and the bill has stalled since then.

SB 6194 resolves the funding question that caused the state Supreme Court to overturn the voter-approved charter-school law in a surprise September 2015 ruling.

Are the House Democrats who constantly claim to be looking out for children serious about taking away this important educational option for families and communities?

The Legislature already checked one of the big boxes on our to-do list, by agreeing in mid-February on a bill that keeps us moving forward on an overhaul of the state’s complicated school-levy system. Senate Bill 6195 was the first piece of legislation signed by the governor this session.

Our work in the remaining six days will be limited to two things: completing work on the budget, which includes approving bills that are part of the budget package; and resolving differences between the Senate and House on bills that were amended by one of the chambers.

My proposed constitutional amendment will be on November ballot


Under Washington’s constitution the boundaries of our legislative and congressional districts are set by a bipartisan group – a redistricting commission that is assembled every 10 years, after each national census, and redraws the lines based in part on the new census results.

While our redistricting process does a good job of preventing the hyper-partisan boundary-drawing we see in other states, the deadline has become an issue. Each new redistricting plan is due to the Legislature by Jan. 1 of the decade’s second year, but in 2012 it was submitted a day late.

I introduced Senate Joint Resolution 8210 to change the constitution so the due date will be Nov. 15 of the decade’s first year. The Senate passed it unanimously on Feb. 15, and the House did the same today.

Wrapping up the plan by mid-November will ensure it is presented to the Legislature on time. It also will allow the redistricting commission and staff to enjoy the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays like other public employees, and quite frankly will help with recruiting staff.

This is a simple and sensible change, but because it would change the constitution, a majority of the voters must agree also. Look for SJR 8210 on your November ballot!

Congratulations, Big Bend CC trustees Franz and McFadden!


The Senate’s authority to confirm appointments made by the governor range from heads of state agencies to the folks who make our local institutions what they are. I was hoping the Senate would have time to vote during this session on the appointments of Anna Franz and Stephen McFadden to the Big Bend Community College Board of Trustees, and am pleased to report that we did so Thursday!

These actually are reappointments – Anna Franz, a Big Bend graduate, has served on the board since 2012, and Stephen McFadden was appointed the year before.

As college president Terry Leas put it in a congratulatory email, “We are fortunate to have these two trustees reappointed because they complement so well our other three trustees—all of them have a passion for serving BBCC and supporting student success. Big Bend now enjoys a full board of trustees who champion the transformation of lives via excellence in teaching and learning.”

I could not have said it better.

Testimony in our Corrections investigation raises questions about governor’s report


If you were the governor, and looking to assign blame for the Department of Corrections’ felon-release scandal, would you prefer to point the finger at middle managers instead of the person you chose to lead the agency?

After this past Monday’s testimony to a Senate panel by former DOC leaders, including the former chief information officer and a former assistant secretary of the agency, there is reason to question the accuracy of the governor’s own investigation into the fiasco.

The Senate’s independent investigation has zeroed in on why DOC continued to release prisoners prematurely all the way into late 2015, due to errors in calculating release dates, after learning about the problem in 2012. The agency and Governor Inslee have blamed a computer-software problem for the debacle, which turned thousands of felons loose too soon starting in 2002. Two people were killed by former inmates who should have been behind bars, and numerous other crimes were committed. The family of one victim, Cesar Medina of Spokane, filed a $5 million claim against the state last week.

The report issued by Inslee’s office appears to give top management a pass and put the responsibility on middle managers instead, while downplaying the importance of a major computer project that senior officials chose to emphasize over fixes to existing software. And it glossed over questions about the management style of former corrections secretary Bernie Warner, who left DOC for a job in Utah just a few months before the felon-release scandal came to light in December.

Leaders of our Senate Law and Justice Committee, who have taken sworn testimony during three public hearings so far, are delaying the next hearing so the governor’s report can be thoroughly analyzed. It is clear already, though, that the Senate’s decision to investigate independently was a good call, because it will do a better job of getting at the truth.

The Senate is continuing to accept opinions and concerns from DOC employees via the http://www.FixDOC.org website.

‘Economic Sense’ and another way to let taxpayers protect themselves


Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of one of the most memorable occasions in my time as a state lawmaker. On March 2, 2012, three moderate Democrats joined with what was then our 22-member Senate Republican Caucus to form a bipartisan coalition and pass a budget that protected taxpayers far more than the plan put forth by then-Sen. Ed Murray.

That led to the formation of the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus, which has twice tried to give Washington voters an opportunity to shield themselves against partisan tax increases by placing the popular two-thirds tax-vote rule into the state constitution.

Both times, in 2014 and again last month, the Senate’s minority Democrats blocked our effort to let a constitutional amendment go to the ballot. They claimed over and over how it would be inappropriate to let a minority of lawmakers derail a majority attempt to raise taxes.

Our MCC’s deputy leader has introduced an alternative, SJR 8215, based on the idea that Washington taxpayers want a higher standard for approving tax hikes but do not demand that it be a two-thirds majority. I am co-sponsoring the measure.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee endorsed the measure this week, moving it closer to a vote by the full Senate.

I believe SJR 8215 addresses the “tyranny of the minority” argument that my Democrat counterparts have raised, and it will be interesting to see how they react to the bill if we bring it forward for a vote.