Legislative Commentary

Let me begin by thanking the hundreds of people who took part in the 9th District telephone town hall earlier this week. This was the first time that Rep. Schmick, Rep. Dye and I have been in a position to host one of these meetings together; we took calls and questions from Ritzville to Pasco to Anatone to Mica, and many points in between. The responses to the three opinion polls we conducted during the hour-long conversation are below.

I have mentioned more than once how, as a farmer, I am an eternal optimist. A week ago I was optimistic that the legislative session would end on time, on March 10. That confidence is being tested, however, now that the Democrats who control the House of Representatives seem to be pulling the same stunt they did last year when it comes to working toward a budget agreement. In 2015 their “voodoo budgeting” dragged the Legislature through three overtime sessions. Please keep reading for the rest of the story.

Last week the Senate committees were back at work holding public hearings and taking action on legislation passed by the House. That makes it far easier for me to keep office hours, which is why the calendar was once again dotted with visits from people from back home. Thursday brought the Adams County legislative reception, which is always a highlight of the session for this Adams County native!

Lack of House budget threatens to force Legislature into overtime


Because our state budgets cover two years at a time, it is standard practice to reopen each budget at mid-cycle and prepare an update that responds to emerging needs and caseload shifts and one-time opportunities that could not have been foreseen when the two-year budget was approved. The changes are contained in what we call a supplemental budget.

The Senate passed its supplemental operating-budget proposal Friday. The House failed to do so. First, let’s look at the significant differences between the two plans:

Senate supplemental operating budget:

Does not raise taxes

Protects the state’s rainy-day fund

Increases state spending by a modest $34 million (less than 1/10th of what the governor proposed)

Makes investments and reforms at the Health Care Authority, Western State Hospital, Department of Corrections, and Department of Social and Health Services

Increased protections for people with developmental disabilities

Support for new wildfire-prevention policies

Protects charter schools

Suspends the diversion of revenue from the state’s environmental-cleanup tax (the Hazardous Substances Tax), allowing the completion of $77 million in cleanup projects

Complies with Washington’s unique four-year balanced-budget law, which requires budget writers to account for the long-term effects of their decisions (meaning beyond the next election)

House supplemental operating budget:

Raises taxes by $120 million over the next year, through six different increases – one of which could raise the cost of prescription drugs

Drains more than half of the rainy-day fund

Shortchanges K-12 education by $487 million not setting aside funds to fully funding K-3 class-size reduction in 2017-19

Does not protect charter schools

Does not preserve funding for all existing environmental-cleanup projects

Proposes change in four-year balanced-budget law that would allow the return of budget-balancing gimmicks

You read that correctly: the same House members who would tell you tax increases are “for the kids” are looking to undermine financial support for our public schools – and still raise taxes! In an interview, the chief budget writer for the House Democrats said he cut education funding in his proposal to bring attention to how much money is needed to meet the standards set by the Supreme Court’s McCleary education-funding decision. What sense does that make?

Funding levels aside, there is more reason to question the intent of House leaders. Last year the House majority approved the spending portion of its budget but not the tax increases needed to cover that spending. For weeks House negotiators tried to push us into a compromise between the balanced budget on our side and the incomplete budget on its side. Finally, the House basically gave up and came over to our no-new-taxes approach – but only after forcing the Legislature into a record 176-day session.

The House majority started down that very same path, this time with the supplemental budget. It approved the spending side but not the half-dozen tax increases, not did it attempt to pass the legislation needed to raid the rainy-day fund.

This legislative session is scheduled to end in less than two weeks. If House leaders are serious about raising taxes this year, or grabbing hundreds of millions of dollars from the rainy-day fund, they need to take those votes so budget negotiators from both chambers know exactly where things stand. Otherwise it’s just empty posturing, as in 2015, and there just isn’t time for another round of that. Let’s work toward a budget agreement that is a no-new-taxes update, not a rewrite aimed at appeasing interest groups, and adjourn on schedule.



Updates to capital, transportation budgets focus on priorities


The supplemental capital and transportation budgets usually do not cause major disputes between the Senate and House, and should not this year either. Here are summaries of the Senate’s supplemental-budget proposals. We also approved our capital budget Friday.

Capital: The Senate’s proposed revisions do not include new projects, only adjustments, making it a true supplemental budget. The capital budget, like the operating budget we approved in 2015, is heavy with support for public schools.

Nearly 65 percent of the proposed budget is devoted to K-12 education: $38 million for expanding the K-3 class-size reduction pilot program, and another $17 million for the school construction-assistance account. The proposed capital-budget update directs $20.8 million toward providing additional mental-health beds and temporary housing for those in treatment. Also, we propose a change that will help to offset a decline in revenue going into the environmental-cleanup account; this will allow previously approved toxic-cleanup projects to move forward.

Transportation: Besides reprioritizing money within the budget, based on changing project conditions, the Senate plan would bump the transportation-budget spending level to $8.6 billion thanks to an infusion of federal dollars.

This will allow new investments, including:

$351 million for road-preservation projects

$108 million for safety improvements

$1.1 million to improve rail-crossing safety

$1.4 million to purchase and operate 10 new WSDOT incident-response trucks

$84 million for fish passages

Senate continues probe of felon-release fiasco as governor issues report


Thursday was a big day in the effort to uncover the truth about the Department of Corrections’ felon-release scandal.

Our Senate Law and Justice Committee called witnesses to testify for a second day this week, while the governor released the report from his investigators.

This enormous management failure centers on the premature release of up to 3,700 prisoners over a 13-year period starting in 2002.

Although Corrections learned about sentence-calculation errors in 2012, the agency did not fix the associated computer software and continued to release prisoners early.

Two people were killed by former inmates who should have been behind bars, and numerous other crimes were committed.

In Thursday’s testimony, former information-technology managers said fixes were delayed because of a competing computer project that drew more attention – a project that was a personal priority of the former corrections secretary who stepped down last fall, before the fiasco came to light.

Governor Inslee used the release of his investigators’ report to blame the DOC failure on “systemic errors.”

I think it’s more revealing that his investigators recommend the hiring of an ombudsman at DOC – someone who can “empower DOC employees to bring crucial issues to the attention of the agency leadership.”

We already understood that DOC is one of those agencies where the fear of losing their jobs can keep people from doing their jobs.

That’s why we set up the http://www.FixDOC.org website, which allows DOC employees to share their opinions and concerns with us anonymously, and why hundreds have already responded.

The Senate’s independent investigation picked up again on Monday with more witnesses.

Economic damage from 2014-15 seaport slowdown: close to $770 million

According to a recent news report, our state’s economy lost $769.5 million in economic activity during the slowdown at its seaports resulting from a labor-management dispute that stretched along the West Coast.

Between November 2014 and the following March, productivity dropped roughly in half, from the usual 25 to 35 containers per hour to between 10 and 18 an hour, according to the study, released by the Washington Council on International Trade.

This hurt our agricultural industry because growers could not get their products past the docks.

For instance, apple growers lost $95 million from exports that were not shipped, while the Washington State Potato Commission reported losses of $23 million a month.

In total, $555.8 million in exports were not moved via ship during the slowdown. On the import side Washington companies lost $345.1 million during the slowdown, due to receiving goods later than anticipated and thus missing holiday sales windows.

In addition, some manufacturers were slowed by not receiving parts in time.