Opinion
McKenna Has Special Interest in Avoiding Special Session
The budget circus in Olympia, featuring a last-minute Republican budget passed in the Democratic senate (the Republicans persuaded three conservative Democrats to vote with them), a Democratic house budget, and a Democratic senate budget that—as opposed to the GOP one—actually had public hearings, provides a politically tricky backdrop for Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, the Republican candidate for governor.
You'd think.
As we noted yesterday , even though McKenna has made education funding the centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign, he praised the senate budget proposal, which cuts education funding. (So does the Democratic house budget, by the way.) As today's Fizz explained, according to nonpartisan staff from both the house and senate, the Senate Republican budget cuts around $40 million from K-12 and the house budget "cuts" $400 million by delaying a payment for 24 hours into the next biennium. Meanwhile, the Republican budget cuts around $40 million from higher education while the house Democrats cut $50 million. The GOP proposal manages to keep their higher-ed cuts lower, though, by taking money away from dedicated toxic cleanup funds. The discarded senate Democratic budget, which used the same 24-hour delay as the house, effectively made no cuts to education.
Even though the two budgets that cut education funding are the only ones now in play, McKenna issued a statement today urging the two chambers to use them as templates to wrap up the session:
Perhaps there's a reason McKenna isn't tripping up on the education cuts that are on the table. McKenna has a special interest in avoiding a special session: the longer that budget talks go on, past the the original March 8 session deadline, the longer McKenna, a sitting public official, is barred from fundraising in the race for governor.
You'd think.
As we noted yesterday , even though McKenna has made education funding the centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign, he praised the senate budget proposal, which cuts education funding. (So does the Democratic house budget, by the way.) As today's Fizz explained, according to nonpartisan staff from both the house and senate, the Senate Republican budget cuts around $40 million from K-12 and the house budget "cuts" $400 million by delaying a payment for 24 hours into the next biennium. Meanwhile, the Republican budget cuts around $40 million from higher education while the house Democrats cut $50 million. The GOP proposal manages to keep their higher-ed cuts lower, though, by taking money away from dedicated toxic cleanup funds. The discarded senate Democratic budget, which used the same 24-hour delay as the house, effectively made no cuts to education.
Even though the two budgets that cut education funding are the only ones now in play, McKenna issued a statement today urging the two chambers to use them as templates to wrap up the session:
A majority in the both the House and Senate have passed a budget, and those two drafts should serve as the starting points for negotiations among all four legislative caucuses and the Governor. At this stage in every legislative session, the usual order of business is to negotiate between two competing budgets. The state can’t afford to have the Legislature go into yet another special session instead of fulfilling its most basic duty of completing a budget on time.
I recognize that tensions run high at the end of any legislative session, but I trust that the leaders of each caucus can set personal feelings aside and negotiate a bi-partisan budget that serves Washingtonians well. From my perspective, a compromise budget should be built on a few key principles: public education should be the first priority funded as we cannot continue to underfund basic public education or prolong the trend of cuts to our institutions of higher learning; the budget should be sustainable in future years; and we must have a sufficient reserve to protect against an economic downturn.
If legislative leaders fail to begin budget negotiations now, choosing instead a partisan path of waiting for the other side to blink, Washington's people will face a fourth special session in less than 15 months. The Legislature has been in session 209 days since December 10, 2010 – over 46% of the time. It’s time to get the budget job done, through bi-partisan negotiations.
Perhaps there's a reason McKenna isn't tripping up on the education cuts that are on the table. McKenna has a special interest in avoiding a special session: the longer that budget talks go on, past the the original March 8 session deadline, the longer McKenna, a sitting public official, is barred from fundraising in the race for governor.
