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A Good Deal for Washington
One of the three key items that need to be resolved this year is the Medicaid expansion that is part of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “Obamacare. (The other two are the overall budget and education funding increase as a result of the McCleary decision.) The policy choices are getting clearer and clearer…
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Standardized Tax Rates for all Marijuana
Rep. Reuven Carlyle and I introduced legislation today to standardize state tax rates across medical and non-medical marijuana. The medical market would now look like the setup initiative 502 put in place for recreational use. The press release we issued is below. My concern is that if we have an identical product being sold with…
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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…
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What’s in “McCleary?”
In 2012 the Washington State Supreme Court found that Washington State is 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)…
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Budget Outline 2013-15
In 2013 the Legislature has three big budget problems to address. It may be that there are other issues for the Legislature (gun safety, mental health, transportation…) but as the budget chair I have an odd focus on what I’m responsible for. Balance the 2013-15 budget, plus make sure that the 2015-17 budget is structurally…
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Financial Management Software: Not Sexy but Good
The Washington Policy Center posted last week about State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s report to Governor Gregoire recommending financial management reforms. It’s a dry report filled with acronyms that’re geeky to both computer scientists AND to accountants. (This hides the fact that they’re talking about hundreds of millions in software development expense.) Jason Mercier, the director…
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2013 Legislative Agenda
My agenda for 2013 is simple to outline here, but I expect great difficulties in working through it: Produce a budget that balances for 2013-15 and 2015-17, resolves the McCleary education funding decision, implements the Medicaid expansion envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and projects rationally into the future. Inside the education box make some strategic…
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Great article on early childhood education
The most leveraged investment, the investment that would have the strongest effect on educational outcomes would be a high-quality pre-school program for at-risk 3 and 4 year olds, with thoughtful attention paid to making sure we don’t damage the child care system for younger kids. (There is a lot of financial cross-subsidization to enable care of very…
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Today’s speech at Redmond Chamber of Commerce
A super crowd at the Redmond Chamber today. It was great to see everyone. I said I’d post the slides from today’s talk and here they are. WA State Budget Preview (PDF, requires Adobe Reader.)
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4-year budget outlook released
The Office of Financial Management (OFM – the gov’s budget office) just released their 4-year budget outlook. This will be the basis for our new 4-year balanced budget requirement. You can see the spreadsheet here. It shows a “shortfall” of about half a billion dollars ($496 million) by the end of the next biennium, in…