This ought to be an editorial that praises the Legislature for having tackled a formidable list of tasks, including a budget of transportation projects for the next 16 years and a gas tax increase to pay for it, operating and capital budgets with funding for important programs and projects and, most importantly, significant progress on meeting its constitutional mandate to achieve full funding for education.
You’ll have to check back with us next month. Or the month after that.
The Legislature adjourned Friday with the above tasks left undone, forcing Gov. Jay Inslee to call a 30-day special session. Budget wranglers for the House and Senate will be back at it Monday, with the rest of the Legislature following on Wednesday.
Lawmakers found themselves in a similar fix two years ago when they needed two special sessions to finish their work, except that time they adjourned having reached a budget deal that averted a partial government shutdown but without a significant transportation package. This time the Legislature cannot allow itself to adjourn for the year without reaching satisfactory deals on both transportation and education.
It’s not as if nothing of merit was accomplished. Among the achievements of the 103-day session was an overhaul of the state’s rules for medical cannabis that brought them into line with the state’s recreational marijuana market. The Legislature also passed legislation to provide for mapping of landslide and other geologic hazards using lidar technology, a top recommendation of the special committee that investigated last year’s landslide near Oso. But even that accomplishment is incomplete as lawmakers have yet to pass a budget that will provide the funding necessary for the mapping program.
Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House reached an impasse last week when they couldn’t agree on a starting point for budget negotiations. The budgets are about $1 billion apart, with the House seeking a tax package that includes an increase to the state’s business and occupation tax and a new capital gains tax on investment income. The Senate insists new taxes are unnecessary and said they wouldn’t continue with negotiations until the House passed its tax package. The House wanted to include the tax package in its negotiations and has questioned some of the revenue assumptions Senate Republicans have made.
We haven’t yet reached the point where a government shutdown looms, but a timely resolution is important.
The state Supreme Court is expecting a report from the Legislature this week on its progress toward fully funding education. It will be up to the justices to decide if the message that “we’re still working on it” will be enough to convince the court to hold off on imposing sanctions for the contempt of court citation that hangs over the Legislature. The state’s school districts also need to know what’s in the budget by May 15 so they can do their own planning for the upcoming school year.
To advise each side to compromise states the obvious. House and Senate are past the point where they can tell themselves further delay wins them leverage in obtaining concessions.
They have 30 days, fewer if they want to be responsive to the school districts.
So we’ll state the obvious: Compromise.
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