Scene on the House floor Tuesday as lawmakers capped two days of day-long floor sessions.
OLYMPIA, Feb. 19.—Lawmakers always save the big show for the end on cutoff day, and there was no disappointment Tuesday as the House finally passed a bill that provides college financial aid for the children of illegal immigrants, and the Senate shot down a teacher-evaluation measure.
But the traditional “5-p.m.-follies” did little to obscure what appears to be the real product of this year’s session – policy-wise it is rather thin soup. Aside from the financial-aid bill that has been dubbed the “Real Hope Act,” a watershed measure that reflects new attitudes toward the state’s immigrant Latino population, and perhaps a bill to reduce the hazards of oil-by-rail transport, there may not be much in the way of big policy that emerges from this year’s legislative session. Five p.m. was the deadline for policy bills to pass from their house of origin, and it was possible at last to see what lawmakers are likely to get done during this year’s quick 60-day legislative session. It ain’t much.
There are a few big bills to go. Teacher-evaluation legislation seems likely to provoke fireworks right up to the final gavel of the year – there are a myriad of ways to keep that one alive. A measure to increase high-school graduation requirements remains in play. The House Monday night passed an oil-transport bill favored by environmental groups, and while a competing Senate version did not get a vote, the House vehicle keeps that issue alive past the cutoff. Beyond that, there are a couple of measures with a chance of passage that have been negotiated in the back rooms of the statehouse between disparate interest groups. One measure limits the ability of auto manufacturers to yank franchises from auto dealers, and another imposes new rules on the maintenance of derelict boats and other vessels.
But the other high-profile measures that have raised a ruckus this year are mostly the sort that pass one chamber with great fanfare and die quiet deaths in the other for political reasons. Some bills, like a progressive-Democrat plan to raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour, have already bit the dust. And the rest? Most of the couple hundred measures that survived the cutoff after two straight days of House and Senate floor action might be called “RCW dust” – bills that are of enormous importance to their advocates, but are so technical and so modest in the changes they make to the Revised Code of Washington that you probably will never hear of them.
And you might say it means all quiet on the legislative front for the next 22 days, right up until the scheduled March 13 adjournment. Seems a good bet lawmakers will be going home that day, for sure.
No News is Good News?
House Deputy Majority Leader Larry Springer, D-Kirkland.
Fiscal measures are exempt from the cutoff and the budget debate comes next, but for the first time in five years it is unclear whether there will even be one. The state is not in a dire financial position; the two-year budget passed by lawmakers last session is in balance, and they haven’t decided whether they will bother passing a supplemental budget to make course-corrections this year. At this point it seems unlikely that the Legislature will pass a gas-tax increase, due to partisan squabbling over transportation reforms and the general reluctance to pass a tax hike in an election year. And the rest of it might be explained by the fact that the Legislature is under divided control: Democrats are in the driver’s seat in the House; the Senate is in the hands of a Republican-heavy bipartisan majority coalition, and any bill that leans too far one way is certain to be defeated by the other side.
Senate Majority Caucus Leader Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee.
Larry Springer, R-Kirkland, the House Deputy Majority Leader, said passage of the Real Hope Act may be recorded as the most significant accomplishment of the session. And if this year’s Legislature doesn’t pass much else of its stature, he said, “I don’t consider it a disappointment at all. I think it is a reflection of the fact that for the first time in years, we did not have to write a brand-new budget, so that weight was taken off our shoulders. We didn’t have to come down here and start from scratch again. We do have a split Legislature, so that means, by definition, we are going to get less done in terms of just the volume of bills. It is natural, and the notion that there are fewer big earth-shattering bills is a function of the fact that we don’t always agree. This is just an example of a 60-day session that by the way will be a 60-day session. So I don’t know if there’s anything to feel bad about.”
And of course, there is the point you hear most often from the Republican side of the aisle – that maybe the success of a legislative session shouldn’t be measured by the number of earth-shattering bills that are passed, but rather by the number that die. In other words, people can take their hands from their wallets. “I don’t think that would disappoint the public,” said Senate Majority Caucus Leader Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee.
Teacher Evaluation Showdown
Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville.
The deadline-day debates were the stuff of high drama, as always. House and Senate rules allow one bill to be taken up just before the 5 p.m. cutoff for the consideration of bills. So lawmakers save for last their biggest and nastiest debates, or else the bills that offer a signature declaration of principle. In the Senate the spotlight slot went to a showdown over teacher evaluations – and with a stunning vote the measure went down.
The rationale for Senate Bill 5246 is a little complicated. To protect the state’s flexibility in spending roughly $40 million in federal funds, lawmakers have to make a change to a teacher-evaluation program they passed in 2012. Student achievement on standardized tests has to be considered as a measure of teacher performance. Essentially it is a matter of changing a single word in state law, from “shall” to “must.” But the proposal from Senate Early Learning and K-12 Chair Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, has run into merciless opposition from the powerful state teachers’ union, the Washington Education Association.
When the bill came to the Senate floor Tuesday, all members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted no, and seven Republicans joined them. The bill was defeated 28-19. It was the sort of vote rarely seen on the Senate floor – normally votes are counted in advance, and no bill advances to the floor unless it is assured of passage. A disappointed Litzow said afterward, “Putting special interest politics above the children who need the most help violates our constitutional duty to provide a quality education.”
Policy reasons for the vote were unclear. The Senate Democrats’ education lead, Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, actually introduced a bill of her own in December that made the same fix. But during debate on the floor, McAuliffe credited testimony in committee with convincing her of the error of her ways. “It’s not a good thing to use statewide tests,” she said. “Local districts should be in charge of their own classrooms.”
When it was all over, Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, said the fact that standardized testing is a priority for the Obama administration might have been a problem for some Republicans. But because it is a fiscal matter, there is a possibility that issue might be kept alive through the end of session. The Senate has already decided it is not a matter necessary to implement the budget. But the House might have a different view, if it is inclined. “We’re going to have to go back and address it one way or another. Forty million bucks is real money.”
Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, said you can count on more action on education reform before the session is out. “We still need to do a lot more there – dollars alone aren’t going to get you there.”
Real Hope Act Passes House
Cheering Latino students in the gallery draw only a mild rebuke from House Speaker pro tem Jim Moeller as Real Hope Act is passed.
Meanwhile, the House reserved its five-o’clock slot for the Real Hope Act, the Senate version of a bill that provides state college financial aid for the children of illegal immigrants. The measure had been a matter of high controversy for the last year, and appeared likely to become a wedge issue for Democrats looking to boost their appeal to Latino voters. But Senate leaders, demonstrating sympathy with the students, brokered a compromise that provided an additional $5 million for state need grants. Thus, unlike previous the previous Democratic version of the bill, known as the Dream Act, the bill will not deny financial aid for the children of citizens, they argued.
Latino students pose with lawmakers after the passage of the Real Hope Act in the House Tuesday evening.
The real drama on that measure came two weeks ago in the Senate, when the bill passed 35-10, all Democrats voting yes but with Republicans deeply divided. The bill remains a matter of huge controversy in the state’s rural districts, and conservative members complain they were jammed. Indeed, all seven Republicans who voted with the Democrats on the teacher evaluation bill were opposed to the Real Hope Act. But of course, when the measure came to the House floor Tuesday evening its passage was assured; again all Democrats voted yes and Republicans were divided. Final vote on SB 6523 was 75-22.
As Latino students watched from the galleries, House Education Chair Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, said college financial aid will help them achieve their dreams. “This is their pathway; this is the opportunity that will will allow these children to be who they are meant to be.”
State Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, voted for the bill but admitted deep misgivings. He noted that there are 32,500 citizen students on the waiting list for college financial aid. “It causes me deep concern,” he said.
Minimum Wage Measures Stall
State Rep. Jessyn Farrell, D-Seattle, sponsor of this year’s failed $12 minimum-wage hike.
The bill-passage deadline essentially provides the first big cut for measures that live and die in a legislative session, and while there are a dozen or so parliamentary tactics that can revive a bill, the failure of a policy bill to advance before the deadline is an indication of tepid support. For example, the $12 minimum-wage measure in the House never had enough support to survive a floor vote – it carried 32 sponsors, but it takes 50 votes to pass a bill on the House floor. The bill died last week in the House Appropriations committee when leaders chose not to bring it to a vote.
Also among the dead was a Senate bill that moved in the opposite direction, a business-backed measure that would have pre-empted local efforts to raise the minimum wage and impose other rules regarding sick leave and other workplace policies. That means the Legislature won’t wipe the city of SeaTac’s landmark $15 minimum-wage measure from the books, and the Seattle City Council is free to consider a broader minimum-wage hike that would apply to every business in the Queen City. The preemption bill was among “good legislation that may have a short life in the House,” Schoesler allowed. “So we didn’t send everything over there that there was 25 or more votes for. There were some other things we had bipartisan support for in the Senate, but hey – you can’t pass every controversial bill and expect results.”
State Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, makes pitch for his ‘tax transparency’ bill.
Indeed, each chamber sent a number of controversial bills headed to the other for almost certain death. For instance, there was a major business-supported worker-comp reform bill passed the Senate; labor-backed bills to regulate employment-status disputes cleared the House. The fate of only one controversial measure seems hard to predict: Just before the deadline Tuesday, the House passed a measure, HB 2201, that would compel some companies that receive tax breaks to disclose information about their relative tax burdens. Concern about that point has sometimes been raised in efforts to eliminate or change tax breaks. But House Finance Chairman Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, says the purpose is purely a matter of transparency: The publicly traded companies that are affected by the measure already disclose tax information to the Securities and Exchange Commission; however the information that is available for public inspection does not deal specifically with Washington state. Though the 52-45 vote was largely partisan, Carlyle said there is reason to think the bill may be go further. He noted there are plenty of tax-break proposals this year, as always, and there are always opportunities to strike deals on tax bills. “I’ve always learned the queue is packed for tax policy, year in and year out,” he said.
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