|
On Wednesday, both the House and Senate met. In these
first three days of the Special Session, both houses
moved to quickly re-adopt budget-implementing bills to
ensure they were prepared to close the session as soon
as negotiations were completed on a final, compromise
2010 Supplemental Operating Budget. Most of those
necessary bills have been sent from the original house
to the opposite house now and public action has already
slowed. The Senate, for example, met for less than an
hour and confirmed a handful of gubernatorial
appointments, then adjourned.
Budget negotiations continue to be the major focus,
although their progress has been very slow. We have
heard that there is general agreement on the overall
size of the budget and the overall size of a tax
package; however, the details of where to allocate funds
and from which taxes new revenues will come continue to
hamper consensus. For K-12 education, the major sticking
point is about $100 million in differing opinions on the
K-4 Class Size Enhancement. As budget negotiators
continue to meet, WSSDA has joined with other members of
the education community to remind legislators about the
importance of four key issues: the K-4 Class Size
Enhancement; continued funding for Classified Staff
Ratios; continued funding for All-Day Kindergarten; and
the proposed enhancement of Local Effort Assistance (or
levy equalization). This ad hoc coalition has
sent a letter to legislators outlining our position
and we, jointly, continue to meet with legislators.
Originally it was hoped (and requested by Gov.
Gregoire) that this Special Session be limited to seven
days. Legislative leaders have now begun to question
whether they will be able to meet this aggressive
timeline. Stay tuned.
|
