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On Seattle’s Eastside, Out-of-State Spending Poses Tough Re-Election Challenge to Sen. Hill

Over the last 30 years, the Republican Party in Washington state has entered a two-year budget biennium with one of its own as the Senate’s chief budget writer exactly five times.

That’s created a four-member club of Republicans who’ve chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee over those three decades. Each became a standard bearer for Republicans statewide, reflecting party principles on the most pivotal legislative litmus test – how the state should spend its money.

The most recent member, Sen. Andy Hill, a one-term Republican from Redmond who represents the 45th District, is no exception. Hill, who became the Ways and Means chairman following the Majority Coalition Caucus’s takeover of the Senate at the end of 2012, is quick to point out that he helped craft a current state budget that adds $1 billion to basic education without raising taxes.

But Hill’s leadership role and budgeting principles have also made him one of the Democratic Party’s main targets this election cycle as each side tries to wrest control of the state Senate. Hill’s race has attracted the attention and half a million dollars in opposition spending from a growing force in national Democratic politics – Tom Steyer, the billionaire Californian who’s been described as Democrats’ answer to the Koch brothers.

With a one-vote margin for the conservative Majority Coalition Caucus currently and a handful of hard-fought Senate races in this mid-term election cycle determining control of the upper chamber, whether Hill holds his job as Ways and Means chairman going into the 2015-2017 biennium could very well depend on if he has a job at all on Nov. 5.

Squaring off with a formidable Democratic opponent in Matt Isenhower, a Redmond businessman and U.S. Navy veteran, and in a liberal-leaning district that covers parts of the Eastside suburbs, Hill faces a tough re-election fight that will be closely watched by each party’s leaders with two weeks to go to Election Day.

STEYER’S ROLE QUESTIONED

In a race focused mainly on budgets and basic education funding in light of the continuing fallout of the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision, Hill questioned the motivations of Steyer. An ardent environmentalist, Steyer and his NextGen Climate PAC have targeted U.S. Senate races and gubernatorial races across the U.S. based on the candidates’ support of laws aimed at curbing the effects of climate change.

NextGen’s advertising campaigns specialize in painting candidates who’ve received oil industry donations as pawns of the Koch brothers. But while Hill has taken some funding from energy companies such as British Petroleum, most of Steyer’s money has thus far gone to Democratic get-out-the vote efforts. The Washington Conservation Voters, with Steyer’s financial backing, has spent $57,000 on ads hitting Hill in the last week, and $105,000 on canvassing the 45th District in support of Isenhower.

Control of the Senate, however, could be crucial to Gov. Jay Inslee’s potential legislative push to combat climate change in Washington state. Hill has a sizeable edge in candidate-raised money – $878,000 to Isenhower’s $392,000 – but Steyer’s pledge of $500,000 in independent funding essentially closes the gap. Hill has also benefited from $86,000 in independent support from the business-backed Enterprise Washington.

“I think it should be troubling,” Hill said of Steyer’s money flowing into his race. “All I know, this guy’s never been to the 45th District. You’ve got external money that comes in with no accountability. Is this about the environment, or is this about control of the Senate?”

Isenhower is sharply critical of Hill’s budgeting, saying it’s essentially paying lip service to the state Supreme Court’s rulings on basic education funding. The justices’ unprecedented decision to hold the Legislature in contempt of court last month should be placed at Hill’s feet, Isenhower wrote in an email.

“The state Supreme Court made it clear…that the Legislature, and specifically my opponent’s budget, is not living up to our constitutional obligation to our schools,” Isenhower wrote. “My opponent’s budget fell drastically short of the goal set forth by the court, which is why the court held the Legislature in contempt.”

HISTORY OF SENATE REPUBLICAN BUDGET WRITERS – AND PROLONGED BUDGET BATTLES

Aside from Hill, three other Republican Senators have been chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee over the last 30 years – Sen. Dan McDonald, R-Yarrow Point, from 1988 through 1992, Sen. Jim West, R-Spokane, in 1997, and Sen. Dino Rossi, R-Issaquah, in 2003.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence three out of the four have hailed from the Eastside suburbs, whose well-heeled electorate had for decades represented a balance of power in Republican Party politics in Washington state.

That support has eroded slowly over the years, and the 45th District was not immune. Representing Redmond, Kirkland, Woodinville and Sammamish, the district voted 60.35 percent for the Obama/Biden ticket in 2008, and 57.52 percent for that ticket in 2012. It has two long-serving Democratic state representatives in Roger Goodman and Larry Springer. A victory for Hill on Nov. 4 would be a significant boost to Republican efforts to re-establish themselves on the Eastside.

It’s also no coincidence Republican budget writers in the Senate have butted heads with some of the Democrats’ most formidable allies in the Legislature – public employees unions, teachers and school employee unions, and health-care workers and advocates – over funding.

In April of 1991 in the face of mass teacher strikes throughout the state, McDonald pitched a budget that would have given teachers salary increases in exchange for Democratic concessions on social services spending amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts.

After months of high-stakes negotiations and 20,000 striking teachers intermittently rallying on the Capitol campus, Senate Republicans passed an operating budget on June 30 that devoted new grant funding to class-size reduction while supplying teachers and public employees an 8 percent bump in pay over the next two years, according to author Ed Seeberger. With state law dictating the operating budget must be passed by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, it was the closest to that deadline the state had come. Gov. Booth Gardner signed it with mere hours to spare.

Rossi invoked some Democrats’ ire in 2003, when he worked to close a $2.7 billion deficit through Medicaid cutbacks and increases in premiums, according to the Seattle Times. Still, the budget required two special sessions’ worth of negotiations, which didn’t conclude until June 11 of that year.

Hill’s tenure as Senate Ways and Means Chairman has unfolded in somewhat similar fashion. Negotiations on the state budget in 2013 dragged on until June 28, and Inslee signed the operating budget both chambers had agreed to on June 30.

To Hill, it represented a battled-tested victory for Republicans in reining in state spending while re-prioritizing funding for basic education without raising taxes.

“There’s a way to do it, and it’s to go in and spend money in the most efficient way possible,” Hill said. “The rest of government didn’t get cut. It just didn’t grow as much. Raising taxes is the lazy way to write a budget.”

But in light of McCleary, Isenhower again hit Hill on budgeting, saying he was too obstinate on raising additional revenue and that it ignores the state’s constitutional obligation to fund basic education. That requires spending beyond what’s allotted in the current budget – estimates say it could be as much as $5 billion by 2018.

“His budget is great politics in an election year, but it’s fiscally irresponsible and punts the problem to the next legislative session,” Isenhower said. “That’s not leadership – that’s kicking the can down the road.”

Hill disagreed, saying McCleary’s mandates have to be worked out over time, and the upcoming biennium is a great place to continue the work he’s already started. He noted how he was able to secure $5 million in funding for the Real Hope Act, which allows the children of undocumented immigrants to compete for financial aid to attend college, and cut the waitlist for developmentally disabled adults to receive state services.

He rejected any notion that the upcoming session would again drag out until June if Republicans have control of the Senate.

“It was nice to see that the Supreme Court agreed with me,” Hill said. “We have demands with basic education. Anybody that is saying today that this is going to take to June is being very irresponsible. We know the problems are. It’s a negotiating ploy at the cost to the state.”

Isenhower has also criticized Hill on transportation funding, freezing teacher pay in the current budget – although the Democrat-controlled House also voted for that budget – and for not supporting Initiative 1351, an initiative that aims to lower class sizes throughout Washington but would add billions in new costs to the state budget and is lacking a funding source. Hill opposes the measure.

“Doing the right thing often requires political courage and my opponent has failed us on numerous priorities, such as fully funding our schools, tackling overcrowded classrooms and passing transportation solutions,” Isenhower said. “I will be a voice for compromise and collaboration in Olympia.”


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