Article by Erik Smith. Published on Saturday, December 10, 2011 EST.
Senate Majority Leader Says a Skinny Budget Will Emerge Monday – a Few Hundred Million in Cuts Before Lawmakers Go Home for Holidays
Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, lays it all out for reporters.
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, Dec. 10.—Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown confirmed Friday what lawmakers have been talking about for days – a gameplan that has them passing a few hundred million dollars in cuts within a week, then going home and coming back for the real work in January.
The cut proposal that will emerge Monday won’t even come close to solving the state’s $2 billion problem. It is expected to slash about $400 million in state spending – budget writers are still hammering out the details. Adjournment is likely by Friday, Dec. 16 or Saturday, Dec. 17, she said.
The big stuff – things like a major tax-increase proposal that will go to the ballot next spring, and the big efficiencies in state government that some members are demanding – those are all things that lawmakers will have to think about when they return Jan. 9 for their regularly scheduled 60-day session.
But Brown said lawmakers really haven’t been wasting time during their current special session, which is now in its 13th day. They’ve gotten a big head start on next year’s session. And she said it isn’t easy coming up with a plan to chop $2 billion worth of state programs and make everyone happy – or at least, less unhappy.
“If only one person had to make the decision, it would be done by now,” she said.
All Olympia in Suspense
House and Senate Democrats are working through the weekend to come up with a budget bill that is expected to be available online at 11 a.m. Monday. The process actually started Friday, when blank “title only” bills were introduced in the House and Senate, SB 5883 and HB 2058. The curious tactic serves several purposes and in this case allowed the bills to be referred to House and Senate Ways and Means committees before they were actually written. Thus lawmakers will be able to dispense with public notice and move much more quickly.
Lawmakers will hold hearings in the House and Senate Ways and Means committees on the proposal at 3:30 p.m. Monday, a few hours after the proposal is released. During the hearings they will presumably hear perfunctory protests from affected parties. After lawmakers listen to the protests, at least one of the committees will amend the blank measure to include the proposal and pass the bill.
What it means is that all Olympia is in suspense right now. No one will know whose ox shall be gored until the budget amendment is revealed.
Easy Stuff First
In a meeting with reporters Friday, Brown said the measure will include those budget cuts on which House and Senate Democrats can agree. “Essentially what they are doing is going over lists,” she said. “The governor had a list. The Senate had already been working on its own list with [Republican and Democratic budget-writers] senators Zarelli and Murray and finding out where there is agreement.
“These will not be the reductions, administrative efficiencies and some of the program level cuts that at this point there is not enough agreement to get through the process. It will be a substantial piece of the problem getting resolved, but we still have a long way to go.”
Right now there’s no telling whether minority Republicans will go along with the upcoming proposal, Brown admitted. But then, even she hasn’t seen it yet.
It should be noted that Republican and moderate Democratic support will be more important when the grander proposals for budget, taxes and government reform emerge in January. The cuts proposal that will emerge Monday is expected to be much less controversial. Republicans say they are working on amendments to the amendment that would increase the size of next week’s cuts package to about $500 million. Such amendments are rarely adopted, however.
Floor Action Next Week
By moving the cuts package out of the Ways and Means Committee on Monday, lawmakers will be paving the way for relatively speedy floor action next week. Brown said she hoped lawmakers will be able to finish the job by Friday or Saturday and then go home.
There might be some action on other bills – but only if lawmakers can reach agreement by Monday, she said. Otherwise there won’t be enough time.
It is a piddling conclusion to a special session that was supposed to address the entirety of the Legislature’s enormous $2 billion shortfall. Gov. Christine Gregoire laid out an ambitious plan when she announced in September that she would call lawmakers back on Nov. 28. Lawmakers were supposed to pass an all-cuts budget and then devise a tax package that might restore some of those cuts if voters approve next spring.
That’s still the basic idea, Brown said. It just won’t happen that fast.
“If you get pieces of it done, which we will next week, then that’s important, and it is a good start. It will mean that we will start the session in January essentially already in the middle of the process, so I assume we’ll get budgets out earlier than you have ever seen them before in a 60-day session.”
Goal Was a Little Ambitious
Brown said the governor was expecting too much when she called on lawmakers to finish the job before the holidays. When you consider the weighty issues that lawmakers must, you just can’t expect the Legislature to move fast, she said.
And she said the Legislature hasn’t been wasting time.
“This is like Civics 101,” she explained. “The governor proposes a budget, but it is a budget for the people of the state Washington. And there are, you know, 98 representatives and 49 senators elected by our constituents to come and put this budget together.
“And so we are, number one, offering a public process, with hundreds of thousands of people coming here and calling and weighing in.
“And number two, we are going to turn our spotlights back on the agencies. They’ve put their proposals forward for reductions, but maybe they’ve missed a few things, so we are going through that process.
“And number three, we have to collaborate with each other to get to 50 [votes in the House] and 25 [in the Senate].
“So phase 1 of that is going to happen next week, with the agreements we currently have. The rest of it is going to continue on through the process.
“I would say – I’ve done this before with my friends at a Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner, you know, write the budget right there with your family and friends at your Christmas dinner. See if you get half the people on board with your proposal.
“This is about our values and our priorities and our democratic process. I’m certainly not going to apologize that we’ve taken a couple of weeks here to really deliberate on decisions that are going to affect thousands of people’s lives.
“Anybody who saw the Ways and Means hearings – and obviously most of us don’t have time in their daily lives; they’re working, they’re taking their kids to school; they are not there sitting through 20 hours of Ways and Means hearings. But we are. We are doing that. We are elected to do that for the public, and that’s why this takes a little while. We are going to get it. We are going to get a solution as positive as we can given how difficult these times are for people.”Your support matters.
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