Legislative Commentary

After today all legislative committees will take a break until mid-March. The Senate’s policy committees wrapped up work on Senate bills a week ago, and our two budget committees did the same.

We will then have through March 8 to work in the Senate chamber (“on the floor,” as it’s called), debating and voting on bills that came forward from the Senate committees.

Because I’m on the Ways and Means (budget) committee, which took action on dozens of bills this week, there unfortunately was less time for visitors.

Still, I was able to meet with many folks from home: leaders from WSU student government, to discuss safety issues related to State Route 26; a group of Cougar graduate students; Adams County leaders; 4-Hers and others.

There also were meetings with the new state superintendent of public instruction, representatives of the state’s sheriffs and police chiefs, leaders from the aerospace industry, and Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers – whom I’ve known since she was a Republican staff member in the House in the 1990s.

As ever, contact my staff (Krista or Jesse, at 360-786-7620) if you will be in Olympia and want to visit. Please know that being “on the floor” all day, every day for the next week-plus will make it challenging to find time, but we will do the best we can.

No slowdown in the Senate

As I’ve mentioned, our senator from Whatcom County is working in a temporary position for the Trump administration. Minority Democrats in the Senate and the majority Democrats in the House have tried to make political hay out of Sen. Doug Ericksen’s schedule, suggesting that the committee he chairs and our Senate majority haven’t been productive because he hasn’t been in Olympia every single day of the session.

The numbers don’t back up the Democrats’ insinuations, however. Senator Ericksen’s committee, called Energy, Environment and Technology, moved 24 Senate bills forward before the Feb. 17 deadline for policy-committee actions.

The House Environment Committee took action on 25 House bills, and the House committee on technology and economic development moved just eight forward – for a combined total of 33 bills.

While it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, as the committees don’t quite cover the same ground, it looks like Senator Ericksen’s committee was plenty productive.

Also, as of Friday the House had passed 4.4 percent of the House bills introduced, while the Senate had passed 4.3 percent of the Senate bills introduced. That’s not enough difference to even notice.

Members of the Capitol press corps asked me several weeks ago whether Senator Ericksen’s periodic absences would be a problem. I replied that our Senate majority could make things work through good time management. It seems we are keeping up just fine.

House approves new education spending, but where’s the funding to support it?

On Wednesday the House majority approved a plan that would spend a lot on education yet fail to fix the issues raised by the state Supreme Court in its McCleary decision. If that isn’t enough, the plan isn’t supported by a stable revenue source the way our Senate-approved Education Equality Act is.

The Tacoma newspaper put it this way: “The Washington state House approved a plan Wednesday to fix the way the state pays for public schools, but without approving the tax measures Democratic leaders say will be necessary to pay for it.

“The passage of the House plan Wednesday sets up what is expected to be a long negotiation toward a final McCleary solution.”

I don’t see how meaningful negotiations can happen until the House majority also approves the tax measures to support the spending it approved this week.

As Senator Dino Rossi puts it, the House needs to answer two questions: Which taxes will it want to raise, and how high?

School districts knew in 2010 that
lift of levy rates was temporary

The governor waded into the education-funding debate again early this week. He joined the Federal Way, Lake Washington, Seattle and Sunnyside school district superintendents to talk about the so-called “levy cliff,” which is really about the expiration of a temporary increase in local-levy authority.

As the Washington Policy Center pointed out, school superintendents have known all along that the expiration was coming, so how can they act like it’s a crisis now?

The WPC included some eye-opening information along with its commentary.

For example, the Federal Way district has seen a 47 percent increase in funding in the past seven years – and the superintendent is making $315,000 a year in pay and benefits.

The Lake Washington district has 45 percent more funding now than in 2010-11, and the superintendent pulls down $336,000 in pay and benefits.

In the Seattle School District, where funding has increased 49 percent in the same time period, the superintendent is paid $354,000 in salary and benefits. Are those districts really hurting financially, with numbers like that?

Bill to boost rural economies wins Senate support

Although the focus this week was still on committee work, the full Senate also spent several hours voting on bills that have already come out of the committees.

One of those is Senate Bill 5790, the Economic Revitalization Act, which is meant to encourage economic growth in rural communities.

As we know, the economic boom that has caused housing prices and rent to soar in the Seattle area hasn’t spread across the rest of the state.

Rural economies have been slow to recover from the Great Recession, and the state Growth Management Act hasn’t helped.

SB 5790 would provide rural counties and cities with more flexibility when managing growth.

It would allow counties to provide for job creation and economic development in their comprehensive plans and require the Growth Management Hearings Board to consider local elected officials’ economic-development decisions when their communities face economic hardship.

Although the bill had bipartisan support, we still heard from some Democrat senators who continue to cling tightly to the GMA despite its inequitable treatment of certain counties. In the end, just six minority Democrats crossed over to help pass the measure.

I hope the next rural-friendly bill to pass the Senate is the “fix” for the damaging Hirst ruling that came from the state Supreme Court in October.

Senator Judy Warnick of Moses Lake, the prime sponsor of Senate Bill 5239, is among those working hard to ensure that water will again be made available in an convenient and affordable way to support families who want to build in rural areas and don’t have the luxury of hooking up to municipal water resources.

The Hirst-fix bill received a public hearing in the Senate Ways and Means committee this past Tuesday.