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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. ————————— 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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
