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Legislators continue to plow through long lists of
Floor Calendars in both the House and Senate as they
race to adopt opposite house legislation before this
Friday’s penultimate cut-off date. All bills (except
budget-impacting bills) must be adopted by their
opposite house by 5:00 pm Friday, March 5, in order to
remain alive. Between March 6 and Sine Die on March 11,
legislative action will essentially be limited to budget
matters and resolving differences in bills between the
two houses.
While many bills continue to be moved, little action
has taken place on education-related legislation. Last
night, however, the House adopted an amended version of
SB 6604. SB 6604 is the bill which, as originally
introduced, would have repealed, suspended or
amended a series of K-12 unfunded mandates. The bill, as
adopted by the Senate, included language that would have
negatively impacted WSSDA’s membership structure. Last
week, the House Education Committee amended the bill,
stripping all provisions in the bill, except for the
repeal of Student Learning Plans. On Tuesday night, the
amended, one section long SB 6604 was brought to the
House floor and was amended again. Two amendments were
adopted. The first amendment restored the requirement
for school districts to prepare Student Learning Plans,
but only for students in the eighth grade who have not
been successful on state assessments or are not on track
to graduate. The second amendment added provisions from
HB 3039, which would streamline current “Becca”
truancy provisions (HB 3039 was adopted by the full
House, but died for lack of action in the Senate). SB
6604, if adopted as amended, will make filing truancy
petitions for six- and seven-year old children optional,
rather than required. Additionally, e-mail
communications and telephone conferences would be
allowed. The House adopted the amended bill with a vote
of 94-3 and now returns to the Senate for its acceptance
or rejection of the amendments.
We continue to await the full House’s action on its
2010 Supplemental Operating Budget proposal. It has
become clear that
SB 6444, the budget proposal adopted by the Senate,
will be the vehicle for action. The House intends on
striking the current language of SB 6444 and replacing
it with language from its proposed budget (HB
2824, as amended by the House Ways & Means
Committee). This means there will be one bill moving,
somewhat simplifying the negotiations process for House
and Senate budget-writers. It is presumed that when the
House adopts an amended SB 6444, it will be returned to
the Senate, where it will sit until negotiators have
reached a compromise. It is also presumed there will be
no official Conference Committee appointed to negotiate
on the budget because, by rule, Conference Committee
meetings are Open Public Meetings. As has happened in
the last several years, budget-writers and leadership
will probably meet privately to hash out a negotiated
compromise and then will simply amend the agreement on
top of the bill (in this case SB 6444), rather than
going through a formal Conference Committee process.
So, we are pretty confident SB 6444 will be the
budget vehicle, but that is the simple stuff. The more
complicated predictions are: 1) “when” will the budget
move from the House; and 2) “what” will the budget look
like when it is adopted? The House is still having
difficulty rounding up the necessary 50 votes for
passage and the coalition of Democrats (the so-called
“Blue-Green Alliance”) who have threatened to vote
against the budget unless cuts to education, health care
and other social services are limited do not appear to
be backing down. (The Blue-Green Alliance is a group of
14-15 progressive Democrats that have joined forces
supporting labor (Blue) and environmental (Green)
issues.) The longer it takes for the House to act on a
budget, the more amendments keep piling up. Late
yesterday, there were almost 40 amendments “on the bar”
waiting for action. At last count today, 46 amendments
are on deck.
Late-breaking action: Just prior to finalizing this
Update, the Senate took action on
HB 2913. HB 2913 would authorize innovative
inter-district cooperative high school programs.
Sponsored by Rep. Kathy Haigh, the bill would allow
non-high districts to establish “Innovation Academies”
to provide local options to their high school age
students. The bill was adopted by the Senate with no
dissenting votes. It will now be sent to the governor
for her action.
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