Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Ken Graham: FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nealey, Walsh Discuss Non- Budget Issues

During my interview with Representatives Terry Nealey and Maureen Walsh on March 24, we spent more than half our time talking about the supplemental state budget the legislature failed to agree on during this year’s regular session. That discussion was covered in-depth in last week’s issue.

Since then, the legislature has passed a supplemental budget that adds $191 million in spending for such things as homelessness, mental health and alleviating a state-wide teacher shortage. The House and Senate also agreed to take $190 from reserves to pay for extra costs due to last year’s wildfires.

To maintain their required four-year balanced budget, the legislature engaged in some funds-shifting from the public works accounts and other adjustments that avoided tax increases, according to news accounts.

But that’s not why I’m writing this. Our discussion on the 24th also got into a number of non-budget issues.

The first is ballot initiatives that were recently passed or are likely to show up on state-wide ballots this November.

The first is a measure passed by voters last fall requiring a sales tax cut if the legislature doesn’t enact a constitutional amendment to require a 2/3 vote of the legislature, or voter approval, before any tax increase is implemented. That one’s now off the table, Nealey said.

“The Superior Court struck that down in King County, and now it’s in front of the (state) Supreme Court, but I doubt it will be reversed,” Nealey said.

Nealey described a couple of the issues he thinks the legislature needs to be ready to tackle, based on upcoming initiatives. One is a minimum wage, which may actually be the subject of two competing ballot initiatives.

“Right now there’s (an initiative) at $13.50, and it’s phased in over four years, if I remember right. But there may be others at $15 or so,” he said.

“There’s been some pressure on the legislature. Do we want to usurp that and come up with a different plan that may be more reasonable and maybe takes longer to kick it in and maybe to a lesser level?”

But Nealey said nothing ended up being done regarding a minimum wage in this year’s session. “We talked about it, but it never got any momentum,” he said.

The other initiative will be “cap and trade” or carbon tax. “It’s really interesting,” Nealey said. “There’s two different environmentalist factions. One likes the cap and trade and one likes the carbon tax. They tried to resolve their differences, and I guess that failed. So we may have both of them.”

We also talked at length about the state’s Public Records Act, and a bill that Nealey co-sponsored, which would have put some limitations on requests that some jurisdictions think are abuses by information requesters.

Nealey said that the main purpose of the bill, which did not make it through the process this year, would have been to stem abusive requests for large volumes of information, which many jurisdictions feel have no purpose other than to muck up the works. “Vindictive, or vexatious, the term is,” Nealey said, “which means they’re just trying to harass.”

“It’s a tough and fine line to draw,” he added. “We want open transparency.”

Nealey said the purpose of the bill was to address the abusers. “Especially for local and small agencies, which (the requests) can bring them to their knees.” These agencies can’t afford the staff or technology to effectively meet these requests, he said.

Nealey and Walsh mentioned a local case in which the Town of Starbuck has been sued by a Spokane attorney because he claims they didn’t respond to a records request, though the city claims it was never received.

Nealey said that the state auditor’s office has conducted a study to estimate the overall cost to jurisdictions in Washington to handle public records requests. That data should be released soon, and he expects the issue to be brought up again in next year’s session.

Walsh discussed a bill that passed this session which provided money to an “Opportunity Pathways Account” to fund charter schools in the state. This bill, she said, would “keep us legit as far as not taking basic ed. money for experimental schools.”

Walsh said that the bill, which was strongly opposed by teachers’ unions, may be challenged in the courts, but she hopes will be upheld.

“We’re talking about 1,000 kids out of a million-plus that we can offer this alternative education system,” Walsh said. She said that there are currently eight charter schools established in Washington, and the limit under current law is 40.

Walsh said that the state’s charter schools so far have been targeting low-income, at-risk kids. “There were Democrats who were very, very committed to allowing” charter schools, she said.

“We’ve got a 60 to 70 percent graduation rate in this state, which is terrible,” Walsh added, “so if we can bump that, offering an alternative method of education for these kids, I’m all for it.”

Walsh also noted that 40 percent of charter school teachers are people of color.

I asked our two local members of the House of Representatives about their plans for running for re-election this year. Their decisions are complicated by the fact that our local state senator, Mike Hewitt, has announced his retirement.

“We’re both going to run,” they said, more or less in unison. “But we don’t know for what spot just yet,” Nealey added. “That’s a fair way to answer it.” So stay tuned regarding which of our House members may try to jump to the Senate.

 

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