Legislative Commentary: Dec. 27, 2018
Last updated 2/1/2019 at 10:51am
Dear Friends,
The time has come to ease up on legislative business and focus on enjoying time with family and friends as we reach the peak of the holiday season. That includes taking a brief break from commenting on things coming out of Olympia, even though the list of deserving topics has been growing lately. I’ll touch on a few of those before signing off.
This week’s legislative calendar included a meeting of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy board. WSIPP takes a deeper look at a variety of issues that cross into the legislative arena, and I’ve picked up a lot of useful information during 13 years as a board member. This time around I came away knowing more about Washington’s taxpayer-funded College Bound scholarship program and the National Board Certified Teacher program.
I met with the Pullman City Council on Tuesday night, along with Rep. Joe Schmick. The following morning took me to Spokane, where Senator Shelly Short came down from Stevens County to join me at the Spokesman-Review newspaper and field questions about the upcoming session. She serves the 7th Legislative District (Pend Oreille, Stevens, Ferry and part of Okanogan counties) and is our new Senate Republican floor leader – third-highest on the leadership team. Yesterday it was my turn to head south, to Clarkston for a “legislative send-off” lunch with the Lewis Clark Valley Chamber of Commerce.
With that, I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I’ll be back with another commentary before the legislative session begins January 14.
A new energy tax AND a gas-tax increase?
Those who wondered why Governor Inslee didn’t propose an energy tax (“carbon fee,” he calls it) as part of his budget package this past week should have a look at what the Democrat chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee has in mind.
Senator Steve Hobbs, from Snohomish County, is talking about a $15 tax per metric ton of carbon emissions plus a 6-cent increase in the gas tax to fund the bulk of a 10-year, $10 billion transportation package. But according to the Everett newspaper, money would also come from “doubling the annual fee paid by owners of electric vehicles; increases in the sales tax levied on auto parts, bicycles and rental cars; and a new statewide transportation impact fee on homes, commercial buildings and manufacturing plants.”
Not surprisingly, the big-ticket transportation projects being mentioned are all in the Puget Sound area, with the exception of a new Interstate 5 bridge across the Columbia River. That reminds me of 2013, when Democrats also ignored major needs in our part of the state in the gas-tax package they rammed through the House. Our mostly Republican majority blocked that attempt in the Senate, which ultimately led to the successful 2015 “Connecting Washington” package and its statewide investments (including improvements to highways in the 9th District).
Unfortunately, the return of one-party control to Olympia means this two-headed monster of a tax plan could gain traction.
Washington ranks third for unsheltered homeless
Legislation aimed at affordable housing and homelessness was already on the Senate Republican agenda for 2019. New numbers from the federal government confirm the need for what we’re suggesting.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ranks Washington third in the U.S. for the number of unsheltered homeless, trailing only California and Florida. The term “unsheltered” means people who spend their nights on the street, in parks, in cars and so on. Our state also is third for chronically homeless – “chronically” defined as those who are continuously homeless for more than a year or have four or more periods of homelessness in a three-year period.
Amazingly, Seattle alone has more unsheltered homeless people than the entire state of New York. This is all happening despite the hundreds of millions in tax dollars being spent to get people into housing and shelter.
Our side of the Senate aisle recognizes that growth-management policies restrict the supply of housing, so our proposals head in that direction. We’ll see what the Senate’s new Housing Stability and Affordability Committee can produce, but I expect it will include throwing more money at the issue.
Schools want more money
A news report from Tacoma this week began with this: “School boards and superintendents across Pierce County are hoping for some financial relief in the 2019 legislative session in the face of funding challenges. For the first time, they banded together to present a single list of legislative priorities to local lawmakers in a county-wide meeting Monday night.”
I sense that there’s bipartisan interest in putting more money into special education, but the Pierce County school leaders want far more than that. Theirs is just one of many calls we should expect to hear for a wide range of added funding, despite the fact that the past five years brought an additional $13 billion for basic education – the greatest infusion of K-12 funding in state history.
It’s as though people have already forgotten that state spending per student has nearly doubled, putting Washington on track to rank fifth in the nation in that category next year; there’s been an unprecedented increase in the number of teachers; and for the first time in 35 years, spending on K-12 accounts for more than 50 percent of the budget.
Those are things to keep in mind, especially when the governor and others talk about undoing the constitutionally based changes we made to the school-levy system. Moving back toward the old approach would allow property taxes to start climbing again.
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