OLYMPIA — Washington Senate Republicans on Tuesday released a two-year state budget proposal that doesn’t include any new taxes, mostly relying instead on existing revenue, fund transfers and earmarking tax income from recreational marijuana sales for education.
The Senate released its plan days after a House Democrat plan that included a new capital gains tax. The Senate proposal looks to transfer about $375 million from more than a dozen different accounts to the state’s general fund. An additional $296 million will come from permanently shifting the distribution of the marijuana taxes — which currently go to health programs, among others — to education. The budget would allocate $2.5 million to the Department of Health for marijuana education.
The plan also seeks to amend a voter-approved initiative to reduce class sizes and ask voters whether they agree with the change through a referendum. Voters in November approved reducing class sizes for all grades, but the Senate plan — like the House plan — only pays for reductions for kindergarten through third grade. That change would go to voters for their approval or rejection under the Senate plan.
“When we sat down to write our budget, our main objective was not to spend a certain amount of money, and it wasn’t to raise taxes no matter what,” Sen. Andy Hill, the Senate Republicans’ main budget writer, said at a news conference announcing the plan. “Our only goal was to provide the services that matter, what people expect and deserve from state government, without calling on families and businesses to send us more money.”
House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan and Democratic Rep. Reuven Carlyle issued a joint statement that said the Senate plan is “an unsustainable budget that relies on gimmicks, gambles and a lot of marijuana.”
“It is a budget that barely provides short-term relief to long-term problems,” they wrote.
Lawmakers are in the midst of a 105-day legislative session that is scheduled to end April 26. They need to write a new two-year operating budget for the state under the shadow of a court-ordered requirement to put additional money toward the state’s education system. The House and Senate are both expected to vote on their plans on Thursday.
In a written statement, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee urged House and Senate lawmakers to work quickly to compromise on a final budget plan.
The Senate plan looks to allocate $1.3 billion toward the so-called McCleary mandate; House Democrats put $1.4 billion toward the obligation. Under the House plan, the state tax on the sale of stocks, bonds and other assets wouldn’t kick in until next year, and would raise $570 million for the last year of the 2015-17 budget. House budget writers say the first $400 million raised would be booked to comply with the state Supreme Court order to increase spending on K-12 education; any additional amount raised beyond that would go to a special account for higher education.
The House plan would freeze college tuition for the next two years, while the Senate plan looks to cut tuition at the state’s public universities and community colleges by linking tuition rates at state schools to a percentage of the average wage for Washington workers. A measure outlining this proposal has already passed the Senate and awaits action in the House.
House Democrats are also seeking to eliminate seven tax exemptions in their plan; Senate Republicans propose to not extend more than a dozen tax extensions that are set to expire, and would extend four others.
The Senate plan also would create a new office of Performance Management to find efficiencies in state government. Senate Republicans also would reject collective bargaining agreements with state workers instead, providing two $1,000-per-year wage increases for all state agency employees.
The House Democratic two-year plan is a $39 billion budget, while the Senate plan is a $38 billion spending plan.
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