LETTER: Rep. Ross Hunter updates: Education, Medical Marijuana, the Budget, and 520 Issues

Rep. Ross Hunter
48th District

 May 15, 2011

LETTER FROM REP. ROSS HUNTER, Ways and Means Committee, Chair

I have not written too often this year – I’ve never been busier in my life. As you may have seen in the press, the caucus tricked me into volunteering to be the budget chairman and I’ve been trying to pull together a responsible budget that does the best job I can do protecting the investments in education, healthcare and the safety net that are important to building a state we all want to live in.

The Budget

We’re in the middle of the budget negotiations now – offers go back and forth between us and the Senate and we’re getting closer. One great break last week was the ending of a tax program we started in December that turned out much, much better than expected. We offered an amnesty to taxpayers: if they’d pay their back taxes we would waive any penalties and interest. We expected to bring in about $25 million and would up collecting over $280 million. Wow. We had already counted some of this in revenue forecasts, but about $200 million is new money that we need badly. 

Click the blue link to "Read More" of Ross's Letter on the State Budget, Education, Medical Marijuana, and 520 issues >>

I expect to finish the budget negotiations in the next couple of weeks and be out of here by the end of the special session on May 26th.  I wrote about our initial offer a week or so ago on my blog. You can read the post here: http://www.rosshunter.info/2011/04/house-budget-proposal/.

Other News

There are lots of other things going on in the legislature and state government this year, but they don’t get as much press as the budget, with the exception of medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana

We passed a bill this year that created a relatively complex regulatory framework for medical marijuana. About a decade ago voters passed an initiative that made it legal (partly) for patients to use marijuana when recommended by their doctor. As is true of most initiatives, this one was poorly written; it created a completely unregulated market with little oversight of the business. I decided I was voting for a bill to create a regulatory structure when I saw an article in the Seattle Times that showed pictures of a “cannabis farmer’s market” with nobody getting arrested. We should not have laws that we don’t enforce.

The Governor vetoed important parts of the bill, and may have made a strange situation stranger. I believe we will have to pass additional legislation to correct the situation we are in now, which seems to be worse than it was before the bill passed.

Education

As part of eliminating over $4.4 billion in spending, the original House budget included several big cuts in education funding: we suspended several popular initiatives, including ones on class size and teacher pay that reduce spending by over a billion dollars. We eliminated a special enhancement we did for class sizes in kindergarten through 3rd grade classrooms for another $214 million.

I worked hard to ensure that the cuts we made didn’t eliminate any items that were part of the legal definition of “basic education” as I believe that doing so would be a violation of article IX of the state constitution, the section that starts with “It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.” This is a matter of interpretation, as are all legal issues, but in the last year the courts have held that Washington already doesn’t meet this standard.

Some specific items in the latest proposal have raised specific concerns:

Alternative Learning: The House budget eliminated $54 million in spending from this item, observing that many of these programs don’t have the same staffing requirements that regular programs do, don’t have the level of administrative support etc. In hindsight, we didn’t understand the programs well enough and used a bit of a blunt instrument. This week we passed a significant change to this policy that we believe will work much better. House Bill 2065 implements these changes and you can read the details here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?year=2011&bill=2065

Teacher Compensation: The House proposal eliminated both cost of living adjustments from initiative 732 and step increases, on the theory that nobody else was getting any raises this year. The Senate took a different approach, cutting about $250 million by giving all K-12 employees a 3% pay cut. If this was how it worked out we could talk about this policy, but it turns out not to work that way on the ground. Teachers are not employees of the state – they work for individual school districts, and have contracts with the districts directly. It’s difficult to implement a policy at the state level that ensures that the cuts will actually come out of salaries. More likely they will be bargained to come out of educational program. The Senate disagrees and thinks it’s fair that everyone takes a similar cut. This remains a difference in the negotiations.

The Senate and House also have different proposals for the bonus teachers get for receiving certification from the National Board for Professional Teacher Certification. The Senate eliminates the bonus after the first three years. The House does not. I personally believe that the National Board bonus is one of the better ways of compensating teachers who are more skilled than other teachers and would prefer to not make this change either.

520 Issues

Tolling

The vendor we hired to implement the tolling on the 520 bridge did not do a very good job, and WSDOT wisely delayed turning on the collection system until they could get the kinks worked out. I am disappointed in the outcome, but pleased that they delayed until it works. I’m also a little frustrated about how the tolling system was designed, but I don’t get to be in charge of everything in the world. This is probably fortunate.

You will need to have a “Good To Go” tag on your car to pay the lowest toll. The following website has info on how to do this:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Tolling/520tolling.htm

I would expect the tolling to start up in June or July, and it takes a couple of weeks to get the tags, so you may want to get started now. I would prefer to not have tolls on the bridge, but there is no other way we can pay for a new bridge.

520 Construction Progress

The Eastside project (405 to the landing in Medina) is underway. They are removing some trees now and expect to continue to do work for the next few years. If you go to the project website you can sign up for newsletters which will alert you to closures and other useful bits of knowledge.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR520Bridge/

I’ll continue to track the progress of this project.

520 Lid design at 84th

There is finally an agreed-upon design for the 84th St. interchange with 520. This has been remarkably contentious and WSDOT has gone to great lengths to come up with something that works, or at least that people think will work. As a result of the compromise we won’t be doing either the “half-diamond” or the “loop” design.

Letter By Rep. Ross Hunter
Chair, Ways and Means Committee
Washington State Legislature

Edited for brevity and clarity By Bob Yoder