Legislative Commentary

The term “unintended consequence” is mentioned from time to time in the Legislature. It generally refers to a negative aspect in a new law – something no one had foreseen until the law went into effect, which needs to be fixed with another piece of legislation.

Our Senate majority knew the unprecedented two-year tuition cut we enabled at Washington State University and our other state-run colleges and universities would allow more students to pursue a college degree.

It would help them avoid taking on more debt through student loans, or leave them more for books and other college costs. For many middle-class families the tuition cut would act as a form of tax relief.

I would not have guessed the tuition cut would help WSU recruit a new president. That has turned out to be an unintended consequence – a positive one, which further confirms the value of that decision.

Seattle’s KING-TV caught up with the new WSU president-elect, Kirk Schulz, at the WSU North Puget Sound campus this week. When asked why he was willing to leave the presidency of Kansas State University for Pullman, he replied:

“There are two things that really came up, and the first was the medical school. The second thing was the decision by the state of Washington to drop tuition and then backfill that with dollars. No other state has done that, to my knowledge, in the last 10 or 15 years.”

Elson Floyd’s final triumph as WSU president before his untimely passing in June 2015 was to win legislative authorization for WSU to open our state’s second medical school. In a sense, then, my dear friend helped create the conditions that would attract his successor to the Palouse. That was another unintended consequence.

Because the state budget covers two years at a time, and we reopen the budget midway through to make adjustments, it was important to make sure those adjustments did not affect what we refer to as the College Affordability Program.

I don’t know if WSU President-elect Schulz knows it, but the supplemental budget agreement passed by the Legislature on March 29, three days before his selection was announced, includes money to formally extend the tuition cut for the 2016-17 school year, just as we had intended.

I’m glad the WSU president-elect appreciates the importance of reducing tuition, because Washington’s governor sure was late to get on board.

In 2013, Governor Inslee proposed a tuition increase of up to 3 percent at the state’s regional universities (Western, Central, Eastern, Evergreen) and up to 5 percent at the research universities (WSU, UW). That would have continued a trend of ever-rising tuition dating back to the 1980s.

As the architect of a cap on tuition growth that was approved in 2007 but undone by the Democrat-controlled Legislature just two years later, I was proud that our Senate majority said no to yet another tuition hike – and instead proceeded to freeze tuition for 2013-14. We came back the next year and extended the freeze for another academic year, the first time tuition had held still in back-to-back years in more than 30 years.

Inslee was behind the curve again in 2015. This time, instead of opposing the tuition freeze, he proposed extending it for another two years. Our Senate majority had a better idea: let’s cut tuition.

As with the freeze, that meant doing battle with Inslee and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, but fortunately for students and their families, we persisted and prevailed on reductions ranging from five percent to 20 percent over two school years, depending on which state-run school.

For a WSU student who paid $10,336 in tuition for 2014-15, that meant nearly $517 less in tuition for this school year and will mean a savings of $1,550 on tuition for 2016-17. When I met with WSU students who came to Olympia earlier this year, it was clear they appreciated the tuition cut more than another two years of a tuition freeze, as was belatedly proposed by Inslee.

I expect the governor will bring up the tuition cut often in the coming months as he attempts to put a positive spin on his four years in office. Will he give credit to our Senate majority? Don’t count on it, judging from how many times Inslee used the word “we” when speaking of the tuition cut to fellow governors at a February meeting in Washington, D.C.

In the category of “failing to protect the public” the state Department of Corrections has fresh competition. On Wednesday night it was reported that two men “considered dangerous” had escaped from Western State Hospital, the 842-bed Pierce County counterpart to Medical Lake’s Eastern State Hospital.

Considered dangerous? That might be an understatement. One escapee was accused of murder but was at Western State because he was found not competent to stand trial; the other was accused of assault and domestic violence but also not competent to stand trial.

And then, this afternoon, DSHS acknowledged a third person had escaped from the psychiatric hospital this week.

Apart from the serious public-safety concern, this is another example of why the Department of Social and Health Services, which is responsible for Western State Hospital, is one of the “problem agencies” in state government.

Late last year the federal government, through its Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, threatened to yank funding it sends to Western State because of complaints about staffing and patient-safety issues. The supplemental budgets we approved less than two weeks ago included tens of millions of dollars to help address the situation – even though I think the problem is not money as much as DSHS.

In late February the feds issued a notice of “immediate jeopardy” to Western State because it gave a patient the wrong medication. That apparently means the hospital’s agreement to provide services (and receive federal payment) could be terminated. What are the feds going to say now that three people escaped?

In this past week’s commentary I mentioned how the end of the 2016 legislative session meant we would soon see report cards on legislators’ performance. The first one I’ve seen came out Wednesday, when the Washington Policy Center, through its WashingtonVotes.org service, issued its “Missed Votes Report.”

This is perhaps the most objective scorecard there is for lawmakers, because you either voted or you didn’t, and the subject of the vote doesn’t matter.

Also, for senators and representatives who miss a significant amount of votes, WashingtonVotes.org invites them to explain (some do, some don’t) and includes their answers in the report.

There was no need for the members of your 9th Legislative District delegation to explain our voting records – because Rep. Dye, Rep. Schmick and I missed zero votes this year.

Considering the House conducted 518 roll-call votes and the Senate had 455 roll-call votes (and ours are a true roll call – senators vote by voice instead of pushing a red or green voting button) that’s a record we can be proud of.