Totem Lake Actually Exists – Who Knew?

Totem Lake, Kirkland
Totem Lake, Kirkland

While out riding around Kirkland with City Council member Shelley Kloba she had us looking at this view, and I wasn’t sure why. Turns out we’re a little further away from the pond than I thought and that it’s actually Totem Lake.  I did not know this lake actually existed – it’s kinda cool that it does. The hospital and the mall are off to the right in this picture. In the map below the view is from where I put the little yellow number 1. Continue reading “Totem Lake Actually Exists – Who Knew?”

Get ready: SR 520 bridge single-direction closures planned for August and September

SR 520 Construction
SR 520 Construction

New data from DOT on 520 closures – best to plan ahead. If you use the bridge frequently it’s worth checking in on their webpage every now and then.

Plan ahead for SR 520 construction closures as crews prepare for five closures of the floating bridge and highway, one direction at a time, during August and September. During the closures, crews will tackle a variety of work throughout the corridor – from pouring concrete for new bridge columns on the west end to shifting traffic onto new highway lanes near Bellevue.

Continue reading “Get ready: SR 520 bridge single-direction closures planned for August and September”

Legislative “Progress” – Early March

Cupola of the Legislative Building
Cupola of the Legislative Building

Each Legislative session has a rythym all its own. This one is waiting expectantly for something to happen. I think you’ll see a flurry of activity towards the end of the month as budgets start to get released.

At the beginning of the session I said we had three priorities this year: balancing the budget for both 2013-15 and 2015-17, funding the education improvements required by the McClary decision from the Supreme Court, and implementing the expansion of Medicaid made possible under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as “Obamacare.” I still believe these are the correct items to focus on, though a stretch goal would be to implement a reasonable package of road and transit improvements.

We’re making progress on all three fronts, though I think some new items have raised their heads and required attention.

  • Gun safety, for obvious reasons. Advocates came in with an expansive agenda, but seem to have focused for this year on finally closing the “gun show loophole” that allows people to purchase guns from private sellers without undergoing background checks. HB 1588 is a reasonable response, creating a way for background checks to take place on almost all sales without creating a centralized database of gun ownership, something very concerning to some people. I support the bill and am a co-sponsor.
  • Mental health treatment improvements. We trail the nation in the number of community mental health hospital beds, and don’t have a very strong system of providing support for people who have dangerous mental health issues. The ACA will change some of this, giving many more people access to care in reasonable ways, but we are going to need to strengthen both our civil involuntary committment procedures and our forensic system, closing some awkward gaps. More below.

I’ve also had a lot of questions about the Supreme Court’s ruling the Eyman initiatives requiring a 2/3 vote for tax increases unconstitutional. The ruling was pretty unequivocal – all bills pass with a simple majority in the Legislature, as the constitution intended. I’ve written a response to the many emails on this topic that I include below.

I’m going to write about the education bills in a different post because otherwise this one will get too long.

Continue reading “Legislative “Progress” – Early March”

Legislative Update

We’ve gone through the first week. The governor and the state-wide officials have all been inaugurated, I fit into the same tuxedo I got married in 23 years ago for the inaugural ball, the Senate is in uproar about Senator Tom’s defection and the consequent change in partisan control, the sun came out (briefly) in Olympia, and we are back to work. The only real surprise to me was the tuxedo fitting.

The Senate is controlled by Republicans due to Democratic Senators Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon caucusing with them. Sen. Tom is the “majority leader” and Sen. Sheldon has a leadership role. I’m not sure how this will work out in the end but it’s gotten a lot of press. We have successfully negotiated a bipartisan budget for the last two years that I have been budget chairman, and I expect that to continue. The change in control of the Senate does not affect the budget as much as you might expect. It may have a profound effect on issues like women’s healthcare, gun safety and those that have more partisan differences of opinion. I am withholding judgment until the end of the session and we see how things work out.

We have three big tasks this year that we must complete, plus a few additional projects many of us would like to get to if we complete the important work.

  1. Adopt a budget that balances for both 2013-15 and 2015-17 in order to comply with the strongest balanced budget requirement in the country. (It’s interesting to note that the state has adopted balanced budgets every year since 1889 without this requirement so maybe it wasn’t as important as people thought it should be…)
  2. Resolve the supreme court’s requirement in the McCleary case that we live up to the constitutional requirement to “amply provide for the education of all children.” Current estimates are that this will require about $4.5 billion every two years by 2018, and we must make “steady progress” towards meeting this goal.
  3. Work out all the details of the Medicaid expansion enabled by the federal Affordable Care Act (Obamacare.) This will cover nearly 350,000 additional people in Washington and save the state over $100 million a year. The health insurance exchange will cover an additional 400,000 or so people, leaving almost everyone in Washington covered.

I’d like to adopt a transportation package that finishes the funding for the West end of the 520 project and invests in other important transportation infrastructure, but this should come after we address the base budget issues and McCleary. I’d also like us to take reasonable steps forward on gun safety in light of the recent spurt of mass killings, but this will be difficult as there are substantial differences between members on the issue. Perhaps the US Congress will be more functional than the Legislature on this topic, but that would be a real surprise.

This newsletter is made up of several recent blog postings I’ve done. If you’re interested in the topic you should be able to click through to the website to see the rest of the article. I find that if I share everything I write with you that the parts at the end don’t get read. Perhaps I should take this as a sign, but I can’t help myself.

For more posts that didn’t fit into this newsletter, and the stuff I post during session you can read my website.

Budget Outline

The current economic outlook calls for modest growth, but growth in tax revenue slower than our obligations. Our current projections show a shortfall of $904 million in the 2013-15 budget.

2013-15 balance sheet

The cryptic “NGFS + Op PW” title in the spreadsheet stands for “Near General Fund plus Opportunity Pathways” accounts, and is the sum of most state taxes that go into the overall budget. “BSA” stands for “Budget Stabilization Account” or the rainy day fund. We can’t spend this fund without a super-majority vote, so the problem is $904 million, not the $349 million on the bottom line.

Many changes will happen to this budget before we are done, including the addition of the McCleary obligation. Adding all the problems together nets you about a $2.8 billion problem.

Keep reading about the budget… 

What’s the “McCleary Problem?”

In 2012 the Washington State Supreme Court found that Washington State was not funding our education system at anything close to the level the constitution requires. Just before the holidays the court opined again, that

“the overall level of funding remains below the levels that have been declared constitutionally inadequate.” (Washington State Supreme Court, 2012)

On the Legislative side the Joint Task Force on Education Finance report issued in December 2012 detailed an eventual cost of about $4.5 billion dollars per biennium in additional funding needed to meet the court’s definition of “constitutionally adequate.” Arguments that the court isn’t talking about funding are belied by the quote above.

Despite protestations to the contrary, this session the Legislature needs to make steady progress towards completely meeting the court’s requirement by 2018. There are 5 school years between now and 2018, and “steady progress” means we get about 2/5ths of the way to the complete solution, or about $1.7 billion.

I personally do not believe that just adding additional money to the system will resolve all the problems we face, particularly with respect to the achievement gap faced by many low-income students. The funds are necessary, but probably not sufficient to improve matters significantly. The same can be said about the proposed accountability changes. I believe we can do both, and have significant results. There will be much negotiation this year to come to a resolution.

For more information read What’s in McCleary?

Gun Safety

I’ve held off commenting on gun safety because I wanted to think about it for a while after the Sandy Hook incident. Writing new policy in knee-jerk response to a single incident typically is a bad idea. However, there have been enough incidents that I think we need to respond and create a safer place to live.

I have already received a lot of email on this issue and I try to address most of the issues that have come up. These are addressed in the actual blog post – there have been a LOT of issues raised.

Some people think about this issue from a “rights” perspective – “I have a constitutional right to own whatever kind of firearm I want” and some from a public health perspective – “it turns out to be a bad idea to let people with unresolved mental health problems or domestic violence issues, felons, and children own dangerous weapons.” We can balance these two perspectives in reasonable ways.

  • Ensure that people with domestic violence restraining orders, mental health issues, etc. are unable to purchase guns by requiring background checks on all gun purchases, including those at gun shows.
  • Keep guns out of the hands of small children and other unauthorized people by creating some kind of “safe storage” requirement. If you are going to keep a gun in your house or car you should be responsible to ensure that children do not have access to it.
  • Reduce the availability of military capacity guns that can fire many rounds very quickly. This is an extension of the principle we use in banning the private ownership of machine guns, bazookas and tanks and would fall under the supreme court’s definition of “unusual and dangerous” weapons. I believe this is a problem that can best be addressed at the federal level, not at the state level. I have no detailed knowledge of Sen. Feinstein’s bill or President Obama’s proposal and cannot comment on the specifics other than to say that it is an issue in the other Washington, not this one.
  • And, on a more personal note, I would feel more secure if most people (including elected officials, but not the numerous state patrol officers stationed at the capitol) were prohibited from carrying firearms on the floor of the House. A surprisingly large number of people who are not off-duty police officers feel a need to carry concealed pistols in a building filled with children, tour groups and sometimes angry protesters. The likelihood of accidents seems high.

For the much longer post read Gun Safety in Washington.

Education Voters Public Forum – Tuesday Jan 22nd

I’m appearing with Senator Steve Litzow at a forum hosted by the League of Education Voters on Tuesday of this week. I don’t expect the event to be a formal debate, but Steve and I will lay out some differences between the positions our caucuses have, and talk about the possibility of compromise and what that might look like. (I recognize that “compromise” is a word that is vanishing from our political lexicon, but in this Washington we try to maintain a quality vocabulary.)

Formal press release:

The League of Education Voters is hosting a forum to discuss education in Washington state with Rep. Ross Hunter and Sen. Steve Litzow on Tuesday, Jan. 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the King County Library Administration Building. (960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah)

The forum will allow residents to learn more about competing visions for funding public education in Washington.

During the event, participants will hear about the current budget shortfall, the costs associated with meeting the McCleary decision by 2018 and a comparison of the different legislative approaches to address the issue.

The forum is free and open to the public. Please register by emailing info@educationvoters.org. There will be more of these events.

Openings for Boats on the 520 Bridge

WSDOT has negotiated a better deal with the Coast Guard regarding bridge openings when boats with tall masts want pass. More hours in the exclusion zone and more notice. If you travel the bridge frequently you may want to sign up for WSDOTs text message alert service. When they know, you’ll know. This is a painful, but temporary experience until the construction is done, but it’ll be for more than one summer.

Here’s their press release on the ssue:

Continue reading “Openings for Boats on the 520 Bridge”

Update on Floating Signs in Lake Washington

Seattle is saying no, he cannot float the sign. WSDOT has many more words to the same effect that I’ve included below. We are working with all the mayors surrounding the lake to make sure that this visual blight does not actually occur.

I will continue to post on this issue, and propose legislation in January should it be needed.

WSDOT Comments:

Continue reading “Update on Floating Signs in Lake Washington”

520 Bridge Openings will be More Frequent

I was astounded the other day to drive across 520 and see the reader board announcing an opening mid-day on a weekend. In the past these seemed to happen at night or sometime when it didn’t impact me. Presumably this was by design. There’s been a change due to the construction activity and I got the following email from WSDOT that you might find interesting.

This is a follow-up to an April 5 press release (attached) we sent you regarding SR 520 construction on Lake Washington. We are operating under new Coast Guard requirements for boaters with vessels over 45 feet tall. Please see today’s attached traffic advisories regarding a bridge opening this afternoon.

Updated Coast Guard rules require WSDOT to open the SR 520 drawspan for tall vessels with advance notice. This requirement is in place because floating bridge construction barges block the eastern navigation channel near Medina, which has clearance for boats up to 64 feet tall. A majority of boats use the 45-foot-tall west navigation channel to pass beneath SR 520.

Continue reading “520 Bridge Openings will be More Frequent”

SR 520 open houses this Tuesday and Wednesday evenings

I received the following update from the WSDOT today. These meetings may be interesting for folks to know what’s happening on the 520 project.

—————————

After 15 years of design and analysis, this week we are launching visible construction on Lake Washington for the new SR 520 floating bridge. Join us at open houses Tuesday and Wednesday nights where we’ll present a full slate of information about:

  • Construction plans and updates
  • Newly released designs of the SR 520 floating bridge
  • Seattle Community Design Process update
  • Program sustainability plans
  • Permitting update
  • Our plans to minimize construction effects
  • How you can be notified about construction-related activities

Meeting details

Medina
March 27, 2012 – 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Three Points Elementary School
7800 N.E. 28th St., Medina, WA 98039

Seattle
March 28, 2012 – 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Museum of History & Industry
2700 24th Ave. E., Seattle, WA 98112

Questions? Email WSDOT at sr520bridge@wsdot.wa.gov, or call them at 206-770-3500.

Post-Special Session Newsletter

Now that the “special” session is over I’ve been motivated to write a newsletter that answers many of the questions I’ve received in email. If you want to print it click here for the PDF version that’s better formatted for your printer (or at least for mine.)

As always, it’s an honor and a privilege to serve you in the Legislature. This will be my tenth year, which I find astounding. I never intended to do this – I thought I’d swoop in and fix school funding, then go back to the private sector. It turns out that some problems are harder to fix than you would think. The “great recession” is also making it a little more difficult…

Gov. Gregoire called the Legislature into special session Nov. 28 to deal with a significant decline in our expected revenue over the remainder of the two-year budget period, which ends June 30, 2013. She released her proposed revised budget Nov. 21.

We finished the special session on December 14th with the passage of a “down payment” bill on the budget, along with a handful of bills that were related to the budget or to creating jobs in Washington. The down payment bill saved a little less than 25% of the overall problem: $480 million. We still have about $1.5 billion to go.

Continue reading “Post-Special Session Newsletter”

520 Tolling to Start Dec 29

Ancient (1979) toll booth on the 520 bridge - courtesy WSDOT

WSDOT sent out the following press release today. You may want to get your Good to Go pass soon.The pass offers a significant discount on the toll.

Ross
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SR 520 tolling to start on Thursday, December 29
Today we announced that tolling will start on SR 520 on Thursday, December 29. If drivers haven’t already purchased a Good To Go! pass, which helps them get the best toll rate, they should take action now:

Purchase the popular $5 sticker pass at participating Safeway, Costco, QFC or Fred Meyer stores then activate it online. Visit www.wsdot.wa.gov/goodtogo/retail for a list of retail locations.

Buy any of five pass options online at GoodToGo520.org.
Visit a full service Customer Service Center or a Mobile Customer Service Center. Find locations and hours at www.wsdot.wa.gov/goodtogo/contacts.htm.

Continue reading “520 Tolling to Start Dec 29”