1. Yesterday was a good day for King-County-Council-Member-turned-King-County-Executive- candidate, Larry Phillips.

First, Phillips got boasting rights when an audit program he pushed as budget chair two years ago turned up $105 million extra in Metro's new-buses fund this year. Given the $100 million shortfall Metro is facing, the new  money could stave off drastic cuts in bus service.

Then, later in the day, after Governor Chris Gregoire vetoed an amendment to a local funding bill that would have given King County the authority to put a local car tab tax on the ballot (worth about $25 million in Metro funding), the  extra $105 million started looking even more valuable.

And I'm going to give Phillips a triple word score on this whole thing  for his analysis of Gregoire's veto: "It looks like the terror of Tim Eyman,"  he said, ridiculing the governor for trembling at the prospect of even giving King County voters a chance to vote on a car tab.

Phillips told me Gregoire's veto was "bad for the environment and bad for reducing vehicle miles traveled," concluding, "it just doesn't make any sense to take away the option of letting voters charge drivers to help pay for buses."

2. Speaking of Gregoire vetoes: Gregoire did not veto an amendment to a climate change bill (as some environmentalists had feared she would) that makes state funded capital projects meet Green standards. (PubliCola had  ID'd the hep amendment as the "Sleeper Legislation of the Year" last month.)

She did, however, veto a section of the same bill that would have stopped the state from using environmentally suspect landscaping equipment.

3. Finally, Gov. Gregoire vetoed section three of this healthcare reform bill , which--read it--seems like the only section with any teeth to make sure the state gets moving on healthcare reform. (The section would have required an advisory group to make sure healthcare reform in Washington state was meeting federal standards.)

"The positive impact of [the bill] was diminished," Robby Stern, executive director of The Washington State Labor Council, says about the governor's veto.

I've posted Stern's full statement below the jump.

Stern says:

This afternoon, approximately 12 people from the Coalition attended the signing of SB 5945. We were all caught by surprise when we learned, while the Governor was making her comments about the bill, that she had decided to veto the section that had established a process of quarterly meetings by an advisory group. The Governor vetoed Section 3 of the bill, a very important piece of the legislation.

The Governor stated as her reason for the veto that there had been no appropriation by the legislature for staff time for this advisory group. Section 3 established the Advisory Group  to monitor the "status and outcomes of activities at the state level with respect to their impact on access to affordable health care, cost containment & quality of care..." and "monitor the progress of health care reform legislation at the federal level, with the goal of aligning state health care activities so that the state is prepared to participate in federal health care reform..." Section 3 also stated that the advisory group would receive no reimbursement or per diem costs.

The Coalition was never informed that the Governor was considering vetoing Section 3. All of us who attended the signing believed that the Governor was going to sign the bill. That is what we were told.

Had the Governor or her staff decided to discuss their thinking with our broad based Coalition, we, at least, would not have been caught by surprise. We could have discussed the cost concerns the Governor had. We knew the cost for DSHS preparing and filing for the 1115 Medicaid Waiver under Section 4, was funded by the legislature. That is the lion's share of the cost of SB 5945.

Evidently, the cost that was not funded by the legislature is identified in the Fiscal Note of 5/12/09. The Health Care Authority maintains they would need .5 FTE to implement Sections 3 & 4. Since Section 4 was funded by the legislature, the Coalition could  have possibly considered raising private dollars to meet the costs of Section 3 once we understood what those costs would be and whether they were in fact necessary to implement Section 3. Instead, we were not even given a "heads up" much less consulted.

Sections One, Two & Four of SB 5945 become law. That being said, the process was not respectful of the Coalition, and the positive impact of SB 5945 was diminished.

Robby Stern