OLYMPIA — The to-do list for the Washington state Legislature hasn’t changed much since lawmakers first gathered in Olympia in January.
As they sat down for a second special session on Friday, they still needed to:
—Create a two-year state operating budget and decide whether new taxes, including a capital gains tax on the state’s wealthiest residents, are needed. Also, they must decide whether to raise gas taxes to pay for about $15 billion in new transportation projects.
—Answer the Supreme Court’s demands to fix the way the state pays for public schools, and figure out how to deal with the voter-approved class size reduction initiative.
Lawmakers also need to take another look at the recreational marijuana tax system, and consider helping farmers, fish and forests deal with the drought.
“The people of Washington deserve to be frustrated,” Gov. Jay Inslee said after the Legislature adjourned Thursday from its first 30-day special session.
The governor basically refused to consider the idea that they would not finish before the fiscal year begins July 1, but the Office of Financial Management has a contingency plan in place in case Inslee is being overly optimistic.
Inslee has ordered budget negotiators to bring their face-to-face discussions to his office every day starting Monday. He said they would begin the process by dividing up the work and setting a schedule for how to tackle each issue.
The budget may be the biggest — at least $38 billion — and most complex issue on the list, but it’s not the only problem demanding a lot of attention.
The issues surrounding the Supreme Court’s 2012 McCleary decision, which called for more money for public schools and less reliance on local levy dollars, are considered even more complicated.
The “easiest” part is agreeing on how much additional money to put in the state education budget. Both sides have set aside about $1.3 billion in additional dollars for education in their budget proposals. Lawmakers also need to figure out how to use those dollars and how to finish paying all the costs of basic education, including statewide all-day kindergarten and smaller classes in at least the early grades.
Related teacher pay issues are both complex and political. The teachers union, Inslee, Democrats and Republicans have said that it’s time to give teachers a raise. They do not agree on how much of a raise, how to pay for it or what to do about the local levy dollars currently used to pay part of teacher salaries.
Both parties have said it may be time to look at Washington’s teacher pay system to make it fairer and more logical.
“It’s a terribly complicated problem. If it was an easy problem, we would have had it solved 30 years ago,” the Senate’s chief budget writer, Andy Hill, R-Redmond, said this week.
Lawmakers have been in discussions on how to deal with the other main element of the McCleary decision — overreliance on local levies to pay for basic education.
Various ideas have been floated, including transforming most local property taxes for schools into state taxes and then equalizing how much districts will receive so poor and rich schools are treated fairly. House Democrats have suggested using a new state capital gains tax to provide a stable source of income for education. Senate Republicans have proposed other fixes, including property tax increases in the wealthiest districts.
The court ruled in September that the state was in contempt for failing to submit a complete plan for implementing its response to the 2012 McCleary decision.
The court gave the state until the end of the 2015 legislative session to finish its work before it would reconvene to consider whether sanctions were necessary. In April, the court said it would consider the adjournment of the last special session as the end.
House Speaker Frank Chopp said progress is being made, and both parties and chambers are talking about the issues that must be resolved before lawmakers can adjourn.
He dismissed criticism from Republicans in the waning days of the first special session that the Democrats were dragging their feet on negotiations.
“Let’s just get back to the table and work out these things,” Chopp said.
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