Short Session Yields Some Big Wins but Leaves Much Undone

[Editor's note: The fol­lowing is an edited news release from the office of Washington Governor Jay Inslee, giving his perspec­tive on this year's legislative session.]

The

2014 Legislature adjourned late Thurs­day night, finishing its 60-day session on time and delivering important pieces of Gov. Jay Inslee's health care and education agendas to his desk.

The Legislature ap­proved several pieces of legislation and budget items to continue Washington's successful push to improve quality of health care deliv­ered in the state and that will reduce costs by an estimated $60 million over the next three years.

One will integrate chemical dependency treat­ment with care provided for people with severe mental illness. The second bill takes a bold first step for better health care purchasing by integrating mental health, community supports like housing and primary care, and by creating price and quality transparency tools that assist consumers and purchasers. The third effort funds Inslee's Healthiest Next Generation initiative to improve the health of children in Washington.

The Legislature also took action on several important education bills.

Senate Bill 6552 boosts the high school graduation requirement from 20 to 24 credits beginning with the class of 2019. The bill incorporates Inslee's legis­lation to provide students new options for fulfilling their math and science re­quirements to provide more pathways for students with different academic or career goals.

In higher educa­tion, House Bill 2626 es­tablishes a 10-year roadmap to ensure every adult earns a high school diploma and 70 percent of adults earn a post-secondary credential.

And one of the biggest wins of the session was passage of the DREAM Act, a bill that will allow thousands of aspiring young citizens the opportunity to access financial aid for col­lege. When he signed that bill last month surrounded by students and activists who had pushed for the bill for years, Gov. Inslee said it was the best day of his time in office.

Legislators also approved several important budget items including increased mental health services, an additional $2 million for new teacher mentoring, $1 million for the Institute for Protein Design at University of Washington, $750,000 for the Jet Fuels Center at Washington State Universi­ty, and additional engineer­ing and computer science slots at Central and Eastern Washington universities.

While the session is no­table for those important moves in education and health care, it ended with some important work left undone.

House leaders didn't bring a bill to the floor that would provide a mod­est boost to Washington's minimum wage bill, a dis­appointment in efforts to address income disparity. In his January State of the State address, Inslee ac­knowledged it would be difficult to get a bill through the Republican-dominated Senate, but had hoped a House vote would help raise the profile of this important issue. Inslee says this re­mains a priority and that he will continue working on it during the interim.

Meanwhile, the Senate failed to muster a vote on a transportation investment package for badly needed maintenance, freight proj­ects and transit improve­ments. After more than a year of negotiations, public meetings and hearings, the Senate's final offer of the 2014 session was further from the middle than where negotiations left off in De­cember.

There was also not enough done in the final budget to address the state's constitutional obligation to adequately fund education. While legislators approved about $1 billion in new edu­cation funding last year, the state Supreme Court, which has already ruled legislators are underfunding basic edu­cation, issued a new order in January that the state was not moving fast enough to meet its own funding time­lines and called for "imme­diate, concrete action hellip; not simply promises."

In response to the court order, Inslee proposed clos­ing tax loopholes to make another $200 million invest­ment toward meeting the court-mandated (McCleary) basic education costs related to supplies and teacher sala­ries. He called on legislators to follow suit and do the same.

Senate majority leaders immediately responded dis­missively, saying "No... We already addressed the money issues..." House and Sen­ate Democrats meanwhile worked to identify lower pri­ority tax breaks they could close to fund education. Ultimately, the supplemental budget passed by the Legis­lature includes a modest $58 million more for schools.

"I appreciate that we took at least a small step forward, but given how big our chal­lenge is, it's very disappoint­ing the Legislature did not take the court or our obliga­tion to our children more se­riously, nor did they include a long overdue cost-of-living adjustment for our teachers," said Inslee. "We're going to be faced with some very difficult choices next year. I hope Senate majority leaders next year will be more com­mitted to dealing with the very real need to direct ad­ditional resources for basic education."

Another disappointment was the failure of a com­promise bill to preserve Washington's No Child Left Behind waiver and the accompanying $38 million that districts currently use to support struggling students.

"This was a bittersweet session for our children," said Inslee. "While we took a few good steps forward in some areas, politics got in the way of many of the diffi­cult but pragmatic and prac­tical decisions we needed to make."