Senate Ways and Means Chair Andy Hill, R-Redmond.

OLYMPIA, Feb. 28.—The state Senate passed a $97 million supplemental budget Thursday afternoon, setting the wheels in motion for an on-time finish for this year’s legislative session. It took nearly two hours to finish the job on the Senate floor, but when you get right down to it, there wasn’t much drama at all.

That might have been the most dramatic thing about the Senate budget debate – a complete absence of the usual rancor that accompanies big budget votes. Final vote on the measure was 41-8. Reflecting a tradition of bipartisanship in the Senate that has prevailed since 2011, the budget bill was negotiated by leaders in both parties, and in the end lawmakers of both stripes pronounced themselves satisfied with the bill. There will be time enough for debate – and reason enough – when they return next year. “Whoever is in charge is going to have this huge problem to deal with,” said Senate Democratic budget lead Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam.

With just 14 days to go in their short 60-day legislative session, lawmakers are making minor tweaks to the $33.6 billion budget they passed last year. The budget for 2013-15, for the first time in five years, doesn’t require any major adjustment for reason of economic trouble. But just wait ‘til next time. Next year lawmakers will have what some are calling a $5 billion problem as they grapple with the state Supreme Court’s so-called McCleary decision that they are not spending enough money on the K-12 schools.

Senate Democratic budget lead Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam.

What this budget means is that they won’t be starting in the hole, says Senate budget-writer Andy Hill, R-Redmond. “We’ll have a half-billion dollars of additional money to satisfy the McCleary obligation on the day we start,” he said. “It is already included in that budget. We’ll have to figure all this out when get back, but we will go into January with a balanced budget without a deficit, with that amount of money already blocked out.”

Now it’s the House’s turn. A vote on their not-altogether-different budget bill is expected shortly.

Enjoy it While it Lasts

State Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens.

You could say this year’s budget debate in the Senate – and indeed in the entire Legislature – is the sort of thing lawmakers someday might look back upon with fondness. The budget, as always, is the single most important bill of any legislative session, and for the last five years, following the onset of the late recession, it has been a wrenching, often partisan debate, as lawmakers every year were forced to make deep cuts in both projected and actual spending. Next year begins an equally troublesome debate, as it is hard to see how lawmakers will be able to come up with the kind of money it will take to satisfy the Supreme Court without some sort of tax increase.

But the rough times of the last few years taught lawmakers a thing or two about working together, at least in the Senate, where narrow margins of control meant Democrats and Republicans had little choice but to work together. That tradition continued this year: Though the Senate is under the control of a largely Republican bipartisan coalition, with 26 votes to the Democratic Caucus’ 23, the Democrats were invited into the room to negotiate a deal.

Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens, noted that in 2011, one of the worst years of the economic downturn, when his party was in the driver’s seat, centrist Democrats balked at the idea of enormous tax increases favored by some in their party. “We said, we’re done with partisan budgets, we don’t want to be like the other Washington. So we got together, we forced the two leaders and the two budget writers together. At first they didn’t like it – I will be honest with you, they didn’t like it. But 2011 was a bad year – as  you will recall, it was the middle of the recession, and we faced a huge shortfall. But in the end, we crafted a budget that was bipartisan, and even though it wasn’t the perfect budget, it was good for the state of Washington. And now, again in 2014, we do another bipartisan budget, each side getting to place their values on this budget to make this state a better place.”

Most speeches Thursday were like that – a sign that perhaps senators weren’t kidding about it.

House Budget Very Similar

Gov. Jay Inslee: “You must have bet on the Broncos.”

For all the head-scratching that took place Wednesday when the House Democrats released a rather more partisan budget proposal – crafted by Democrats alone – there really isn’t that much of a difference with the Senate. The House Democrats have advanced a number of ideas that ordinarily might keep lawmakers arguing well into springtime – proposals to end tax breaks, launch a big new pre-school program, give teachers a cost-of-living pay raise, and dedicate lottery money to school construction. All told their proposal is $270 million, nearly three times the size of the Senate plan.

But the key thing about it is that they have compartmentalized the controversy, putting the things they say must absolutely be done this year into what they are calling a “base budget” bill. Meaning the rest might easily be jettisoned in the interest of reaching agreement. The base budget looks pretty much like the Senate bill. The main difference is that the House would spend an additional $22 million on school-district overhead costs and $20 million less on college scholarship programs in science, technology, engineering and math.

Even Gov. Jay Inslee, at a news conference Thursday, said he couldn’t see any reason why lawmakers will have to stick around beyond the scheduled adjournment on March 13. To a reporter who wondered how both parties could possibly settle their differences, Inslee cracked, “You probably bet on the Broncos in the Super Bowl.” He added, “A lot of people lost a lot of money on that game.”

A Few Dissenting Words

State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle.

For all the lovey-doviness on the Senate floor Thursday, there naturally were notes of dissent. The Democrats, true to minority-party tradition, spent the first 40 minutes of the debate offering budget-busting amendments that the majority shot down as a matter of reflex. The biggie was a proposal to give teachers a cost-of-living pay raise this year. Teachers have not gotten a cost-of-living adjustment from state funds since 2008, though it should be pointed out that they still have gotten pay increases through local levy money over that period. The Washington Policy Center observes that as a result of local levy funds, average teacher pay has increased 16 percent over that period.

State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said he was voting nix because he didn’t think the budget spent enough on K-12 education.  “It is not good enough for the students in our schools to say that we are going to hopefully come up with a plan later,” he said.

His was among a handful of protest votes. All eight who voted no were Democrats.

Senate leaders, meanwhile, called it a victory for the Senate’s newfound and sometimes-strained tradition of bipartisanship. Said Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, “With a broad bipartisan vote of 41-8 on the Senate’s operating budget, our colleagues in D.C could learn a lot as to moving our economy forward instead of getting locked into partisan battles. This is a great budget for all of education. It maintains our focus on creating an educated workforce so our great companies have plenty of talented new hires, keeping their growth here instead of looking elsewhere.”

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