Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 EST.

So Much for Bipartisanship When Legislature Takes First Important Vote of Year

House Ways and Means Chairman Ross Hunter, D-Medina, gets a skeptical look from state Rep. Charles Ross, R-Naches.

Read what they had to say on final passage — a Washington State Wire exclusive.

Note: Details of budget vote have been corrected.

By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, Jan. 24.—All that happy talk about bipartisanship seemed to disappear when the Legislature took its first big budget vote of the year, on a House bill that takes another big whack at state spending.

            The measure, written by the majority Democrats in the state House, lops about $346 million from the current state budget.

            The only problem with it is that it cuts in all the wrong places, Republicans complained. School districts will be devastated in order to save the state’s troubled “Disability Lifeline” program. Carpool and “climate change” programs are maintained. And maybe the worst thing of all is that the Democrats didn’t ask them what they thought about it.

            So went the first budget debate of the year, one that sounded like just about every other budget debate in recent memory. What was striking about it is that it followed one of the grandest-ever displays of legislative cooperation, in which Republicans and Democrats stopped arguing for a single day last month and passed about $500 million in emergency spending cuts.

            Lawmakers said at the time that they hoped to keep it up.

            So much for that.

            It was a lousy start, said state Rep. Charles Ross, R-Naches. “My fear is that we are seeing those doors of opportunity for bipartisanship begin to close.”

            House Ways and Means Chairman Ross Hunter, D-Medina, said they’ll do better next time.

            One Step Along the Way

            The budget bill ultimately passed the chamber on an almost-perfect party-line vote of 55-43, the way budget bills normally do. All Republicans voted no. All Democrats voted yes, save for state Rep. Jeff Morris, D-Mount Vernon, who peeled off and voted with the Republicans. House Bill 1086 now moves on to the Senate.

            It is the first of several painful budget votes lawmakers will have to take this year as they cut a total of $5 billion in projected spending. Three sessions after the Great Recession started, the state has finally burned through its reserves and exhausted big grants of federal bailout money. Voters said no to new taxes last November.

            This bill chops a little more from the state’s current budget for 2009-2011, which runs through June 30. There’s still $255 million more to cut before the books are balanced, but Democrats are waiting for a new tax-revenue forecast in March that may give them a little more to spend.

            The big trouble comes when they write the budget for 2011-13. They’ve got $4.6 billion to cut there, though not all of that figure is real money – it includes some expensive new K-12 education programs that may never be launched. But between $2 billion and $3 billion represents actual cuts, and the figure is big enough to be daunting.

            Hunter said the Republicans will have their say when it comes time to write the big budget. The important thing is that some cuts had to be made right away, so they could be implemented before March 1. He said it is unprecedented for the Legislature to pass a budget bill so early in the session. And of Monday’s hour-long complaint session on the House floor, Hunter said he didn’t take it personally:

 “It’s the job of the minority party to complain about not being included in budget decisions.”

            What it Does

            The House bill makes cuts across state government, cutting deepest in social services, health care and education. Actual spending cuts total $222 million, and the state will raid another $124 million from dedicated accounts set up for other purposes.

            The most important elements are these:

n     It cuts state funding for the Basic Health Plan, the crown-jewel state program that provides subsidized health insurance for the working poor. But part of the plan is to replace state money with private funds and a tax that would go to voters on the November ballot. That would keep the program on life-support until federal health reform launches in 2014. The governor had proposed terminating the program.

n     It maintains the state Disability Lifeline program, which the governor also had proposed cutting. That program provides state stipends and health benefits for unemployable adults.

n     It eliminates a $42 million grant to school districts, after the fact. Meaning they have to return money that was provided to hire new K-4 schoolteachers for the 2010-11 school year.

            Yanks Money From School Districts

The main issue in the debate was the school district money.

Republicans argued that it was just plain wrong to yank the money back. Some districts held off spending it, knowing there was a good chance the Legislature might reverse itself. But others have already used the money to hire teachers, and they’re going to be in deep trouble.

“If an employer did that to an employee, there would be outrage on the floor of this house,” said state Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama. “If a business got in trouble and an employer said, oh, every dollar that I’ve paid you after September, you have to pay me back because the business is in trouble – that doesn’t really make sense. It wouldn’t be appropriate, but isn’t that exactly what we are telling schools to do? And where is the money going to come from, Mr. Speaker? They’ve already hired the teachers.”

Some districts fear bankruptcy, Republicans said.

Just as bad, they said, was that the Democrats appeared to be using the money to save the Disability Lifeline program. That program serves mainly adult men, many of them homeless and with substance-abuse problems. Republicans said they’d rather spend the money on kids. “I can tell you today that I am voting on behalf of the students,” said state Rep. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup.

            People Will Die

State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, argued for the program. “This is a difference between basics and enhancements,” she said. “They’re all very difficult choices, but when you look at priorities you have to look at survival as a priority, and in some cases these services are survival services. They can mean the difference between life and death.”

But not everything favored by Democrats seemed to be life and death. The budget bill doesn’t cancel an $800,000 appropriation to fund the state’s “climate change” initiative. And it maintains bonuses for employees who carpool. Just wait until the next budget-cut bill, the Republicans said.

            I-1053 Amendment Eliminated

A controversial committee amendment that takes a whack at last year’s Initiative 1053 was scratched from the bill. The tax-limiting measure requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature for tax increases and a majority vote for fee increases. The amendment would have allowed the state Transportation Commission to raise ferry fares and bridge tolls.

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