Legislative Commentary

Dear Friends,

Last week was to be the final week of the 2016 legislative session. That is no longer the case, mostly because the Senate and House of Representatives did not reach an agreement on updating the operating budget adopted in 2015.

Within minutes of ending the session on schedule Friday night, Governor Inslee issued a proclamation immediately calling us into a “special” session. It is a big disappointment, because it did not have to be this way, for reasons I will briefly explain.

Coupled with that is the emotion of seeing longtime members of the Senate either announce their retirement or give their farewell address.

As Senate majority leader I receive many requests for media interviews. One stood out from the rest this week, for the wrong reasons.

In mid-February the House passed a “joint memorial” – a message to Congress that is symbolic, not binding – related to campaign financing. The measure was referred to the Senate committee that oversees elections but did not advance.

Thursday morning I agreed to a brief interview with someone claiming to be a reporter from a national-level political talk program. He asked questions about campaign financing, then after the camera was shut off, he started lobbying me specifically about the House measure. I politely but firmly concluded our conversation.

I don’t mind talking about campaign financing, but I also don’t like it when people ask to meet under what turns out to be false pretenses. Sooner or later their real agenda will come out, and that often comes at the expense of their credibility. At least this won’t happen once we finally wrap up our work and I’m back to sitting on a tractor seat!

Budget disagreement leads to ‘special’ session

A supplemental budget is supposed to be straightforward: we open up the two-year budget adopted last year, make adjustments to account for events not seen in our budget-writing crystal ball (the cost of fighting summer wildfires being a traditional example), then close it up for another year, then we return to the drawing board and start from scratch on a new two-year budget.

On Thursday night, after calling for a special session of the Legislature, the governor basically said as much.

“They had 60 days,” he said, referring to lawmakers and the length of this year’s regular legislative session, “to make some relatively minor adjustments and address a very small number of urgent budget issues relating to wildfire and mental health.”

And, I would add, make sure the budget update still complies with Washington’s unique four-year balanced-budget law.

We are in a special session now because the House Democrats don’t want to follow the rules. Their budget chief voted for the four-year balanced-budget law in 2012, but now wants to cast it aside to enable a whole lot more than the “relatively minor adjustments” the governor described. The new spending and tax increases proposed by the House don’t pencil out the way the balanced-budget law requires.

It didn’t have to be this way. The Senate plan approved Feb. 26 checked all the boxes that make up a true supplemental budget. If the governor had gotten behind our plan, we probably would have adjourned for the year yesterday instead of going into overtime.

While Governor Inslee’s description of “a very small number of urgent budget issues” is on target, he was way off target with an irresponsible threat he made several days ago. If the Legislature didn’t have a budget in place by 10 p.m. Thursday, he vowed, he would veto the 37 bills that had been passed by the Senate and delivered to his desk for consideration.

Having painted himself into a corner, the governor went ahead with 27 vetoes late last night, after the Legislature adjourned without a budget. We can override a veto with a two-thirds vote in the Senate and House, and all of these bills had that much support the first time around, so there is reason to think his vetoes may end up being a complete waste of time.

What did Inslee really think he was accomplishing? As the Vancouver newspaper put it this morning, “attempting to coerce legislators into doing their job by threatening to not do yours is nonsensical.”

Today our Senate majority put an updated budget proposal on the table and ran through the details in the Ways and Means Committee. It still balances without tax increases, and still complies with the four-year balanced-budget law, but lets go of some things that were causing heartburn for some, such as the proposed merger of two of the state’s older pension plans.

The first Senate budget was a great starting point for negotiations; if the other side balks at what we proposed today, the odds of wrapping up this special session next week will get longer.

Update on capital, transportation budgets

The supplemental operating budget grabs most of the attention but there are two other budgets in line for updates, the capital budget and the transportation budget.

Supplemental capital budget: The Senate passed its supplemental capital budget in late February. The House version won budget-committee approval but was not brought for a full House vote.

The primary purpose of the capital budget is to pay for construction of and improvements to public facilities; in 2015 and again this year, the Senate version is strongly focused on creating more classroom space to accommodate efforts to reduce class sizes in grades K-3. It also would make major new investments in facilities for mental-health treatment.

Supplemental transportation budget: this includes some funding revisions that will allow progress on some additional projects across the state. It also directs $5 million to the Washington State Patrol for an officer-retention effort that will give 5-percent raises to troopers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains.
 It may take more work to reach agreement on a supplemental capital budget than on the supplemental operating budget. While it isn’t mandatory for the Legislature to update the capital budget – we didn’t in 2014 – our leader of that effort is still trying to work out a responsible approach.

Charter-school remedy approved


One of the first bills the Senate passed this year is Senate Bill 6194, to change how public charter schools are financed. This would resolve the questions raised by the state Supreme Court this past September when it declared the charter-school financing mechanism to be unconstitutional.

The House finally passed SB 6194 on Wednesday, with changes that the Senate agreed to yesterday. This legislation will allow the continued operation of the eight public charter schools in our state that are educating more than 1,000 children from Seattle to Spokane.