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Anticipated actions in the Legislature can quickly change — and that
was proven again last night. In our Update for Thursday, we noted that
the House Appropriations Committee would be taking action on the
House’s proposed 2008 Supplemental Operating Budget. In fact, just
prior to posting the Update, we noted that Committee members had moved
to Democrat and Republican caucuses to discuss amendments to the
budget plan. Well, yesterday the House Democrats had their first
official “meltdown” and following the close of caucus meetings, the
Committee adjourned without taking any action on the budget. This
morning, the Committee scheduled a new meeting for this afternoon to
take action on the proposed budget. The full House was supposed to
take action on the budget plan today, but because the Appropriations
Committee was unable to adopt the budget as planned yesterday, action
by the full House has been moved back to Monday. Senate budget-writers
had tentatively scheduled to release their version of the budget on
Tuesday; however, it is unclear if delayed action on the House budget
will cause a delay in the release of a Senate budget or not.
So what happened
in the Appropriations Committee? We received word that over 60 budget
amendments had been introduced by Committee members. This certainly is
not unusual; however, Rep. Helen Sommers, Chair of the Appropriations
Committee, had requested that members from her side of the aisle limit
the number of amendments to two per member. At least a few Democrats
balked, notifying the Chair that they would be “no” votes on the
budget unless major changes were made. Once again, it appears that
K-12 education was a major sticking point. The two main concerns
appear to be the proposed elimination of the phase-in for all-day
kindergarten and the proposed additional one percent cost of living
adjustment for educators. The House proposal would “freeze” funding
for the full-day kindergarten program phase-in that the Legislature
started last year, saving $16.1 million. Grants supporting full-day
kindergarten for the highest poverty schools (top 10 percent of
poverty rates) in school year 2007-08 would be maintained in school
year 2008-09; however, the scheduled phase-in to the top 20 percent
high poverty schools for school year 2008-09 would be suspended
indefinitely. The second concern appears to be the local school
district impact of providing an additional one percent COLA to
educators. This COLA would be on top of the 3.9 percent COLA as
required by Initiative 732 COLA and on top of the “equalization” COLA
for educators in non-grandfathered districts, which is included in the
underlying 2007-09 budget. For some educators, the final raise would
be as high as 5.6 percent. Because these raises would only be provided
for state-funded employees — the COLA for levy or federally funded
employees would be covered by local districts — the local fiscal
impact could be drastic for many districts.
Yesterday, the House Transportation Committee was successful in moving
the House’s proposed 2008 Supplemental Transportation Budget. At the
time this Update is being prepared, the full House was taking action
on the Transportation Budget. This means the House Appropriations
Committee had not yet started its meeting on the Operating Budget;
we’ll provide information in Monday’s Update.
In other budget
news, the House Capital Budget Committee adopted its proposed 2008
Supplemental Capital Construction Budget this morning, sending it to
the full House for action. Only a small handful of amendments were
introduced, most of little consequence. One amendment, which was
rejected, would have eliminated funding for an education pilot project
which has not been addressed in these Updates. The House Capital
Budget proposes to provide $500,000 from the Washington Housing Trust
Account for the development and implementation of a three year pilot
program to provide rental housing vouchers to low-income teachers in
Yakima and Burien schools. An effort was made to eliminate this pilot,
but Committee members who supported the projected argued that teacher
housing is a serious issue and it would be helpful to have some solid
data to begin addressing the issue. The amendment was defeated and, at
least for now, the funding and the pilot program remain in the budget. |
