Legislative Commentary

One of the realities of coming up with a new state budget every two years is that the cost of the things which are “must do” and “nice to do” always exceeds the amount of revenue available. It forces the Legislature to prioritize.

That brings me to one of the questions that will face us this year: is spending $11 million more on vacation time a priority? Please keep reading for the details.

My week started with a visit from Mary Fairhurst, who became chief justice of the state Supreme Court late in 2016, followed later Monday by a meeting with Governor Inslee.

The list of people who came over from our area included school board members from Ritzville, Pasco, Cheney and the Pasco-based Educational Service District 123; conservation-district officials from Franklin and Grant counties and the Palouse; city officials from Othello, Pasco, Rosalia, Rockford and Lind; Department of Corrections employees; folks with the Columbia Basin Development League and the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program; and others.

While my door is always open to people from back home, my office calendar is generally booked solid – that goes along with being Senate majority leader.

So please, if you are in a position to stop by but didn’t get on my calendar already, check with my staff (Krista or Jesse, at 360-786-7620) before making the walk to our corner of the Legislative Building only to find that I’m tied up for the next hour or two.

Friday brings first winnowing of bills

The legislative session’s first deadline, or “cutoff,” arrived Friday.

The Senate policy committees, of which there are 12, had until 5 p.m. to act on Senate bills. Roughly speaking, about 25 percent of the Senate bills introduced this year are moving forward from today.

Bills that receive policy-committee support and have a financial cost go to either the Ways and Means or Transportation committees for consideration next week; the rest go directly to the Rules committee, where we pull bills for the Senate voting calendar.

The bills that didn’t receive enough support to advance are considered “dead” for the year but can be reintroduced next year.

That gives the sponsors time to figure out why they fell short and act accordingly, usually by revising the language. A bill has to clear many hurdles before it can become law, and that’s a good thing.

The $11 million vacation?

This year lawmakers will be looking to put more money into statewide concerns like basic education and mental-health services and address regional issues like homelessness and rural economic development, and on my side of the political aisle, we want to accomplish that without raising taxes.

Yet on top of those things, the Legislature will be asked to approve what amounts to an $11 million vacation for a select group of Washingtonians, a bonus vacation, to be more specific.

It used to be that the Legislature set salaries and benefits for state employees as part of our normal budgeting process. In 2002, however, a change in law (that took effect in 2004) took that out of our hands.

Instead of bargaining only about work conditions with the governor, labor unions now negotiate pay and benefits too. All the Legislature can do is cast an up-or-down vote on the agreements that emerge from behind closed doors and are wrapped into the budget.

The collective bargaining agreements agreed to by the governor for 2017-19 include additional vacation time on top of pay raises.

I asked the Senate’s non-partisan budget-committee staff to calculate the true cost of the added vacation time means, once you factor in things like the overtime that would have to be paid at around-the-clock state institutions (such as prisons) to backfill for the additional time off being taken.

The staff figured the costs for the 2017-19 and 2019-21 budget cycles, and came up with a four-year total exceeding $11.1 million. That’s real money above and beyond the cost of the three pay raises, spread across two years, which also are in the agreements the governor made.

Since 1947, insurance companies have been prohibited from contributing to candidates for state insurance commissioner – the law is there to avoid the appearance of corruption.

It is no wonder we are now seeing legislation like Senate Bill 5533, which would prohibit contributions to gubernatorial candidates by entities that collectively bargain with the state.

Education-funding update

More than two weeks after the Senate approved the Education Equality Act, our legislation (Senate Bill 5607) is still the only plan on the table that truly answers the constitutional question about school levies found at the heart of the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.

The House majority has approved an education-spending bill that doesn’t fix the unconstitutional aspects of the levy system (and doesn’t designate a funding source to support the spending proposals).

This week three members of the Senate minority introduced legislation that follows the per-student funding approach in the Education Equality Act but also does not reform the levy system.

Leaders of the Senate minority, lacking a proposed solution of their own making, are left trying to attack the numbers in the plan already passed by the Senate.

As my minority colleagues with budget-committee experience know, numbers can change because of new data, as do the assumptions tied to those numbers.

That doesn’t make for a good “sound bite,” though.

It’s true that some of the assumptions in SB 5607 are different today due to updated data, but if anything, the changes represent good news for school districts.

My previous report shared the Yakima Herald-Republic’s praise for the Senate education plan. This week it was the Tri-City Herald’s turn, which included this on-target appraisal:

“The GOP plan provides an equitable, consistent dollar amount per student and ensures the state is meeting the requirements outlined by the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision. That’s not the case in House Bill 1843.

While certain goals in the plan are admirable, like significantly boosting teacher pay, the proposal does not outline specifically how that would be accomplished.

“Democrats estimate they will need about $1.6 billion in new revenue over the next two years in order to fully fund basic education and pay for salaries. But they have yet to come up with a way to raise the money. This makes us wonder if the court would approve such a sketchy outline.

“House leaders have suggested a new carbon tax or a new capital gains tax. They also suggested ending tax breaks and changing the state’s business and occupational tax system.

“But without a firm financial plan — and with no provision preventing school districts from using local money for basic education — we fear the House version will not fix the underlying equity issue, which is what the McCleary case is all about.”