After Republicans and three Democrats successfully brought the budget up for a vote using a procedural maneuver, the Senate is now beginning to vote on about three dozen amendments to the budget. Watch live on TVW.

“If you support economic development, support this amendment… if you think that helping small businesses export their products is a bad idea, vote no,” said Sen. Derek Kilmer, of amendment 238.

“I urge a no vote,” said Sen. Don Benton. He said if legislators supported K-12 education, they should not support the amendment, which he says sends money to oversees offices.

The amendment failed. No amendments have passed so far.

“I’m sensing a pattern here folks. Amendment after amendment highlights a real pattern of cuts,” said Sen. Karen Keiser, speaking in favor of an amendment on public health funding. She says the cuts affect those who are the most vulnerable in the state, including the mentally ill, poor working families and more.

“My dear friend, you are seeing a pattern here,” said Sen. Cheryl Pflug. She said Republicans aren’t willing to make trade-offs that will put the state one billion dollars in the red next January.

Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe said “these are not trade-offs, these are people.”

Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen delivered a tearful speech, saying she believes we have an obligation to take care of those who can’t care for themselves. She said she was raised very poor and depended on public health nurses. “I guess I’m just really feeling very bad tonight,” she said.

After several hours of amendments, the Senate took up final passage of the budget.

“It is my hope that we will work together on many things that were brought up tonight,” said Sen. Joe Zarelli. He said “differences have arisen” but Republicans will continue to try.

“Congratulations, Mr. Minority Leader, you fooled me,” said Sen. Lisa Brown. She said week after week, they were told they’d see a proposal from Senate Republicans, but now she knows she was duped. “This is a promises broken budget,” she said, citing programs for the most needy that would be cut. “If you are a poor woman, let me just say, tonight is not your night.”

Sen. Mark Schoessler said the budget “moves the ball down the field” and should get a yes vote. He said if Democrats’ amendments would have been proposed, it would have spent too much money — meaning a summer special session.

Sen. Jerome Delvin said this is a “good, sustainable budget,” and that the state is “finally not kicking the can down the road.”

Sen. Steve Hobbs said he and other members of the “Roadkill caucus” worked hard on reforms this session. “We agreed to this,” he said, “and the pledge was that we would not pass a budget until these reforms go through,” he said. But he said tonight has been “unfortunate.”

“This budget cripples education, taking $44 million from K-12 and $30 million from higher education,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker. “I believe this budget is a back-room deal … this doesn’t represent who we are.”

“This is not a bipartisan budget. This is an old-time politics budget,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen. She said people hate this type of thing. “Your constituents will not be proud of you,” she said to her colleagues. “We’re going to be here a long time. Mr. President, what do you think, a month?” she said, referring to special session.

“We’ve been sitting at basically a 24-24 standoff,” said Sen. Joe Zarelli. “For all the rhetoric … this thing was poised to go the other way if another vote showed up” for Democrats, he said.

Sen. Craig Pridemore said no one knows whether this budget is sustainable. He said he’s searching for a word to describe what happened tonight, “and I find hypocrisy.”

Sen. Michael Baumgartner thanked everyone for the “good, hard fight” tonight and said he thinks after being “mad for a few days” everyone can come back together and work on the budget.

The budget passed, 25 to 24.

Tags: Democrats, Republicans, Senate

House Republicans have called for state lawmakers to pass a separate K-12 budget that would fund schools before the rest of the operating budget. They will discuss details of that plan, as well as a proposed K-12 education budget, in a news conference Thursday at noon.

The House Education Appropriations and Oversight Committee held a public hearing on Tuesday on the bill that would require the Legislature to pass a separate K-12 education budget. You can read a full Q & A with the bill’s prime sponsor Rep. Bruce Dammeier about education funding on our blog.

Tags: education, K-12, Republicans

Here’s my interview with Sen. Mike Hewitt.

Tags: bipartisan, Hewitt, Republicans, Senate

“We are giving the citizens of our state an alternative to the budget released by the House Democrats,” said Rep. Gary Alexander. “Our budget is sustainable,” he said, in that it does not rely on one-time funds.

“We try to minimize those fee increases … our budget ensures that the benefits of those fee increases go back to the people paying for those services,” he said. He said this is a go-home budget that, if passed, could allow lawmakers to leave town on time.

Some of the major differences, he said:

- “We spend over a half a billion dollars less in our budget … in near-general fund and over a billion dollars less” in total

- “We do not use one-time” funds from “questionable” sources, like the liquor distribution privatization

- “We do not rely on any kind of gimmicks, we do not rely even on the shift in one day of apportionment dollars”

- “We put more money into education and to public safety”

- He said they put more money into mental health and long-term care

- “We do not assume that we need any kind of a viable bridge” for Basic Health or other programs to 2014

Rep. Ed Orcutt says Basic Health and Disability Lifeline (also called GA-U, its pre-reform name) can’t be saved until the federal government might chip in. He says the federal government is having its own budget problems that could prevent that. “Not only is this more sustainable, it’s more stable.” He said House Democrats’ proposal includes an ending fund balance that relies on $300 in liquor distribution privatization. If that falls through, the ending fund balance will be “a very, very small amount.” In the House Republican proposal they don’t rely on that — or other one-time funds, he said.

“The House majority budget, in my mind, kind of tries to maintain the government of the past,” said Rep. Bruce Dammeier. He said the Republican proposal is a forward-looking budget. (more…)

Tags: Alexander, Budget, House, operating, Republicans

Thursday at 7 p.m. TVW’s Inside Olympia will look back at the last time the budget was this bad.

Host Austin Jenkins will talk with then-Gov. John Spellman as well as Republican House Speaker Bill Polk and House Minority (Democratic) Leader Wayne Ehlers. It ought to be a very interesting conversation.

Background: In Nov. 1979, Washington voters approved a Constitutional amendment to require the Legislature to meet annually. (Before then, it was a once-per-two-years affair.) According to the official legislative history, the following session, in Jan. 1980, was virtually a non-event.

In Nov. 1980, Republicans took control of the House, Democrats had a 25-24 lead in the Senate and Gov. Dixy Lee Ray was defeated.

And then: The state suddenly faced a budget shortfall of $1 billion.

If session this year has been stressful for you, reading this could give you heartburn (speaking from experience): In the middle of budget negotiations, a scale-tipping Senate Democrat switched parties, (more…)

Tags: Budget, Democrats, Inside Olympia, Republicans, taxes

Yesterday, Microsoft announced its first major layoffs in the software company’s history. KUOW reported the hit to the economy is even greater than it sounds: Each Microsoft job supports, on average, three other local jobs.

But something CEO Steve Ballmer said relates to state government budget discussions: Microsoft, he said, is making cuts because they don’t see the economic downturn as a recession, they think the economy is resetting to a lower level of consumer spending.

It’s not just semantics: The difference is at the heart of the public budget-related disagreements between Republicans and Democrats here.

Republicans say state spending grew to an unsustainable level and should be reset to a lower level.

Democrats say we’re in a recession, the state’s economy will bounce back, and with that will come increased revenues from sales and property tax.

And that’s why Democrats have been open to using federal stimulus money to patch the $6 billion-and-growing budget hole, whereas Republicans say they don’t: One group thinks they’re building a bridge, the other thinks they’re lengthening the plank.

Tags: Budget, Democrats, economy, Republicans

Rep. Richard DeBolt just took the stage at a Republican press conference to offer their opinion on the Governor’s inaugural address.

He said he was recently talking to someone in his community who asked what the state was going to do since it’s out of money. He told the woman that the state actually has 5 percent more than last year.

Sen. Mike Hewitt, Republican leader in the Senate, said the state is largely to blame for the budget crisis because of overspending. He said his caucus supports Gregoire’s plan for sparking private sector business and reform the government.

(Gregoire, for her part, has said the state is mostly the victim of the national economy. “We all know our state didn’t make this economic crisis, and we all know we can’t unilaterally solve it,” she said today.)

“Those are things that we’ve talked about for years.”

Next up: Rep. Gary Alexander, a Republican from Olympia.

“I expected to see more dialogue in terms of reducing the budget,” he said. He said the Legislature needs to get to work cutting from the supplemental budget because every dollar cut from the last six months of this budget saves more in the long term. Read more on that in a post to come very soon, or here.

Sen. Joe Zarelli says: “The message that I’ve been trying to take to Sen. Brown and others in the majority is, even if you do decide to pursue more revenue, you’ve still got a sizable problem,” he said.

Zarelli said that Republicans look forward to working with Democrats to solve this problem, but “in the end of the day, they’re the majority party and they can choose the direction,” he said.

Tags: Budget, Governor, inauguration, Republicans

The 2009 Washington state Legislature starts on Monday. In the 105 days that follow, state lawmakers will need to put together a budget that addresses a projected $5.7 billion deficit.

Here’s Inside Olympia host Austin Jenkins talking to Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown and House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt:

And here’s the City Club of Tacoma’s annual legislative preview, which was earlier this week:

Now go get some rest and get ready for Monday.

Tags: Democrats, House, Legislature, Lisa Brown, Republicans, Richard DeBolt, Senate, Washington

Yesterday, lawmakers gathered in Olympia with dozens of reporters and editors from around the state for the annual Associated Press legislative forum. Their message: The budget will dominate this 105-day session.

Another message: This session will end in 105 days. To paraphrase Marty Brown, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s Legislative director: Budget decisions won’t get easier with more time. There’s no way to predict whether Legislators will be able to agree on a budget by the end of regular session, but several said it was an important goal.

Watch the entire forum here:

On the budget:
(more…)

Tags: Budget, Democrats, Governor, House, Public Policy, Republicans, Senate, Ways & Means