Author: Ross

I am the Director of the Department of Early Learning for Washington State. I formerly represented the 48th Legislative District in the State House of Representatives, chairing the Appropriations committee and spent many a year at Microsoft.

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.

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End of Session Budget Update

Thank you for allowing me to represent you in the Washington State Legislature. It’s an honor and a privilege. This year was pretty “special.” There’s nothing like a little drama to spice up a legislator’s life. This session had it all – defections on budget votes, protesters requiring hearings to be shut down, people being arrested, and a sleep-over to end the session.

This newsletter only addresses operating budget issues. Lots of other interesting things happened or are happening (520 bridge construction, for example) and I will address those in the next document.

The Operating Budget

We left the 2011 regular session with a budget that most neutral observers thought was a pretty reasonable product. It was balanced and had a healthy reserve of over $700 million. The final vote was a bipartisan one, with significant participation from Republican Senate members. Since then we’ve had pretty significant declines in our revenue projections due to the economy and faced about a $2 billion projected shortfall coming in to the December special session.

In that session we solved about $500,000,000 of the problem, leaving about $1.5 billion left to fix in January. We got good news in the forecasts, reducing the problem to about $1 billion, which we addressed in this year’s supplemental budget. Our negotiating process was bi-partisan, as was the final voting pattern.

The budget has no cuts to education. This means early learning, K-12, and higher education were left whole. This is a miracle, and was not accidental. I felt strongly that in light of the Supreme Court decision on school funding we could not in good conscience make reductions here, and as the budget committee chairman my opinion was able to prevail.

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House plans to move budget-related bills forward this week

OLYMPIA – The House is moving forward Wednesday with a short list of bills that will be necessary to implement (NTIB) the supplemental operating budget. Although an agreement on the final budget has not yet been reached, the House Democratic negotiating team wants to get the ball rolling.

“We have been negotiating in good faith practically every day of this special session,” said House Ways and Means Chair Ross Hunter (D-Medina). “We’ve taken significant steps toward the Republican position, and are still willing to discuss the final sticking points, but the time has come to act as well as talk.”

“We will also be placing a striking amendment to the budget on the bar Wednesday morning,” said House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan (D- Covington), “and we plan to take action on it later this week. The length of time it takes to pass a budget through both chambers means we have to begin moving things now.”

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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.

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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.

SB 5539 – Film Credit bill

Update 3/9/12: The bill was “pulled” from Ways and Means last night and passed the House 92-6. The official term is that Ways and Means was “relieved of consideration” of the bill. I believe this particular subsidy is similar to the way the economics of the NBA works and voted no, but clearly a majority of legislators disagree with me.

I have received a lot of calls and e-mails from people about the Film Credit bill (SB 5539), as we do with any expiring tax credit or preference. The film industry is important to the state’s economy and to both the Spokane and Seattle areas in particular. We obviously want to do everything we can to encourage growth, however the structure of this particular credit has some issues.

The credit works as follows:

  • Companies get a 100% B&O tax credit for donations they make to a non-profit organization, reducing state tax revenues.
  • The non-profit in question can then subsidize film and commercial productions for up to 1/3 of the cost of production for their film or commercial.

In essence, taxpayers in Washington are paying out of state companies to do work in Washington. It’s one thing to give someone a reduced tax rate, but in this case it is a direct subsidy of commercial work. In deciding if a tax break is doing its job you have to look at what your alternatives are for spending the money. We could provide a much cheaper tax incentive to a wide variety of industries, or we could use the money to educate children (employing teachers, for example). In comparison to other incentives, this one is very, very expensive for the benefits received.

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More on the Slow Motion Default in Wenatchee

In December we passed a bill out of Ways and Means, and then the House, but not the Senate that would have allowed Wenatchee to solve its own problems about financing their money-hemorrhaging arena, the Town Toyota Center. The region has continued to work on a mutually agreeable solution and a Senate bill embodying the proposal is up for consideration in Ways and Means Monday.

The contentious issue in the bill is the ability for the city of Wenatchee to impose a 0.2% sales tax with just a vote of the council, not a vote of the people. The current bill allows this, and everyone testifying on the issue stated that it was crucial to the success of the endeavor that they be able to do this.

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Good Revenue and Caseload Forecasts Reduce Severity of Budget Problem

Actually, we “found” about $87 million in the revenue forecast update and about $330 million in projections of less usage of state services over the remainder of the biennium. In addition to this there has been less utilization of services in the “TANF box,” which is what we call the bundle of services we administer for the federal government that provide temporary aid to needy families.

This significantly reduces the level of severity of the budget cuts we will be making, but does not eliminate them. We expect to introduce the first draft of the House budget proposal this week. I expect significant changes over the remaining weeks of the session, but am hopeful (and on-schedule) to finish by March 8th, the official end of the session this year.

 

Educational Goals: penny-wise and pound-foolish decisions

The Ways and Means committee heard a number of contentious bills Saturday, including HB 2538, which is intended to save money for school districts by reducing requirements that the legislature has placed on them without funding. It was requested by the governor, and most of the savings came from lowering the frequency of audits when there has been no problems. I’m OK with this part.

The Education committee, which heard the bill first, amended it to eliminate the required state assessment of writing skills, and consequently the graduation requirement that students must have proficiency in writing. I am very uncomfortable with this decision, as were a number of other members of the committee during the hearing. We assess core graduation requirements because we believe that what is measured is taught. We should not carry this too far, and many skills are best assessed in the classroom, but we assess core requirements to ensure that students have the opportunity to learn them.

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Landmark Supreme Court Case

The week before session the Washington Supreme Court decided the McCleary case unanimously in favor of the plaintiffs – two families and a number of school districts who claimed that the state had historically underfunded its primary duty to fund education. As those of you who have followed my writings over the years know, I agree with the plaintiffs and feel like the last decade of my work in the legislature has been justified.

CR Douglas of Fox News interviewed me on the issue. I’d include a nice embedded video here if I knew how to do it. Click here for the link to the KCPQ interview.

I also wrote a piece over the weekend before session while I was still angry about the headline in the Seattle Times about the decision. The text below is a little strident, but lays out my analysis of the issue: cutting basic education, and perhaps cutting ANY education is off the table this year.

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School Funding Reform

I’ve created a new page on my website, not just a blog post, that provides background and current documents on my local levy shift proposal. If you click on Reforming School Funding in Washington in the title bar above you’ll see the page.