Thursday Q&A: Rep. DeBolt and Sen. Brown on marijuana, taxes, the budget and more

This week’s Q&A is with House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown. I’ve posted the interview in the order in which they were conducted, as usual, asked each the same broad questions, and included everything each lawmaker said. The conversations cover marijuana, public safety bills, taxes and job creation. And no interview would be complete without talking about the budget. Enjoy.

Rep. Richard DeBolt:

Q: There are currently bills to close state government for one day per month, limit state worker salaries and another in the House to make official about $50 million in cuts from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget. Which of those do you support, what other ideas do you have and what’s the timeline?

DeBolt: I guess the first thing that I would like to say about it is we saw some of these problems because we have a systematically flawed budget process. We have to change how we budget and what our priorities are.
I would break the budgeting process up: I would do an education only budget first. It’s our paramount duty, so we should fund it first. Then we can fund public safety and the vulnerable. Then, with whatever is left, you make the rest of your budget. So you protect the children and the most vulnerable.

Q: What about the furloughs?

DeBolt: As far as furloughs, we haven’t had a chance to explore the bills fully yet. The bills were introduced and the process probably broke down a little bit so we don’t have all the details yet.
From my perspective, we think everything should be on the table. We need to make sure that what we’re doing to balance the budget is real – not just delaying costs until later.

Q: You mentioned an education-first budget. When I was covering the Oregon Legislature in 2005, the Republican House Speaker suggested a similar proposal to fund education first.

DeBolt: Oh yeah — and what happened?

Q: It didn’t pass, and they were in session for about eight months that year because the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate couldn’t agree on much. Why is that a controversial idea?

DeBolt: I remember that. We’ve been suggesting the education-budget first idea since 2002. We haven’t even gotten a hearing on it.

Q: Why do you think that is?

DeBolt: I think that Olympia is stuck in the past and has a tendency to be myopic in their viewpoints. So if its outside the box, it’s probably not going to be considered. We’re not a super change-oriented place.

Q: So would closing state government for one day a month be something you could support?

DeBolt: I don’t know because for some services, it could be problematic. For example, I want to get our permitting wait times down. Can they do the same amount of work if we’re furloughing people? That’s of interest to me. I don’t know how the functions of government would be changed. I don’t know if you can just arbitrarily close all the agencies and make it work. If it’s agencies that support our economy and help move us forward, we shouldn’t slow that down.

Q: One big policy issue has been public safety, in the wake of the police shootings last year. A Constitutional amendment is on the table — is that the right move? Is there danger in amending the Constitution so soon after these crimes?

DeBolt: We support the governor’s bill. Rep. Mike Hope has been working that for our caucus. We also have the bill that involves transfer from other state, then the other one that we’ve added is aiding and abetting. We want to change aiding and abetting laws because these people knowingly hid him and they helped him. They knew about it in advance and they should be held felony responsible.

Q: Is there danger in amending the Constitution so soon?

DeBolt: No. No, not on this one, I don’t think so. I think it was an oversight. Once you say it, it is so logical that if you’re taking away someone’s life with three strikes and they got nothing to lose, then you’re creating an opportunity for crime. I don’t think anybody thought that there were people in the word who would do something like what he did in Lakewood. Now that we understand that there are bad, evil people, we know have to be careful. And my feeling is that it’s better to err on the side of caution.

Q: Yesterday, the House public safety committee rejected two marijuana bills — decriminalization and legalization. Agree or disagree?

DeBolt: No. I agree that it should go down. We don’t need that right now.

Q: Was it a good discussion to have?

DeBolt: No.

Q: Why not?

DeBolt: Being more tolerant of drug use I don’t think is the right step for our country to take. If you look at other countries, like the Netherlands, that have legalized marijuana – there, it was done to quell a government uprising. They did this and the uprising went away. It makes people numb to the things around them, and that’s not what we want. We want people to be engaged.

And it’s a precursor to other drug use. I worry about alcohol use as a whole. I worry about recreational drug use. I don’t think it’s something we should make easier.

Q: What other things are you working on?

DeBolt: I’m always hopeful that our bills will get a hearing. We have our Made in Washington plan, which has to do with issuing permits in 90 days, UI (unemployment insurance) reform, healthcare reform and worker’s comp reform.

There’s thousands of businesses that have permits pending for expansions that have been waiting 2 years, 3 years, 20 years in some respects. These are jobs that we need in Washington state.

My best example is Boeing. When they announced the move of their world headquarters: It was 2 ½ years earlier that they tried to go through the permit process here, then they moved to Chicago. If they got a permit in 90 days and then broke ground here, do you think they would have moved to Chicago 2 ½ years later? Banks won’t lend until businesses have a permit on hand.

Q: I was talking to a civic organization and I told them that one of your plans was to issue permits automatically if they hadn’t been reviewed within 90 days. When I said that, people thought I was kidding at first — is there a danger to issuing permits automatically?

DeBolt: I assume they laugh because they all have jobs that don’t require permits. To grow a business and to run a business, you have to have permits.

We had a press conference yesterday and invited business owners from the area. The things we heard were: Reform UI, reform worker’s compensation and fix permitting.

Q: What are businesses asking you to do to Unemployment Insurance?

DeBolt: We have to get our UI rates down. Workers comp has gone up 800 percent for everyone because of insolvency issues. We’ve been trying to run a bill for 6 years.

When Boeing moved, by the way, they got a permit in 16 days. Sixteen days.

We have a backlog and people also don’t want to come here because they know that the regulatory environment is not very god. They want to go to places where they can open up shop. Battle Mountain Gold, for example, it took them 26 years and $100 million just to get a permit. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? We have so many interveners and our system is so different than everybody else’s that it’s bogged down, it’s killing us.

Q: Anything else?

DeBolt: No.

And now, for Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown:

Q: There are currently bills to close state government for one day per month, limit state worker salaries and another in the House to make official about $50 million in cuts from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget. Which of those do you support, what other ideas do you have and what’s the timeline?

Brown: The House and Senate Democrats have been working together on those bills and we see them as a package that would achieve over $100 million in early savings, so I support them.

Q: In the hearing on the bill to close state government for one day per month, there was a lot of testimony from agencies and organizations that said, We have a horse race on that day, We’re a revenue-generating agency, etc. Are there exceptions?

Brown: The bill will have exceptions for things that clearly relate to public health and safety or to state activities that bring revenue in and, in addition to that, we’ll have another off-ramp, which is that agencies can present an alternative plan that works for them. I think we’re talking about having the Office of Financial Management sign off on that plan. But if it achieves the same amount of savings, they can create an alternative. If they can’t agree on an alternative, then there’s a fall-back plan.

The way the bill is currently written, I believe the first official day would be in June. I think it goes for 13 months, so June is the last month of the fiscal year.

Q: What’s the timeline for passing those? When will people know what to expect?

Brown: We’re hopeful that these bills could pass within the next couple of weeks. I’m not positive we’re ready to move yet, but there have been a lot of conversations in my caucus about it. There are some questions about how we might protect some of the lower wage public employees because what is effectively a 5 percent pay cut for someone who makes $30,000 a year is a lot bigger impact than on someone who makes almost $100,000 a year who’s maybe in a managerial roll at an executive agency. I can’t say that we’ve got the right solution yet.

Q: One big policy issue has been public safety, in the wake of the police shootings last year. A Constitutional amendment is on the table — is that the right move? Is there danger in amending the Constitution so soon after these crimes?

Brown: I have to say that we haven’t had our caucus debate on that so all I have caught so far is a small piece of the hearing on TVW. And I would like to hear the debate before we decide how to move forward.

Q: So, you don’t know if you support it?

Brown: I’m not sure. It seems to me subject to details that end up coming out in the bill.

Q: Let’s talk about taxes. Where are you at? When will people know what taxes might be raised?

Brown: We don’t start with taxes, we start with what do we need to protect, what can we reduce or reform, then we look at what’s left over. And we’re open to revenue to fill that gap, especially because last year we didn’t go there and everything was done on either the reduction side or with federal dollars. So it will still be a while. I think lists are still being generated, we’re going to share ideas and try to work in advance of bringing legislation forward.

Q: What about the Massachusetts election? Does that put state assistance in peril?

Brown: We still think that it’s likely there will be some kind of federal assistance but we’ve never been kind of banking on that anyway. We’re trying to solve the budget problem with or without federal dollars. If federal dollars come in, I think that will be an additional cushion.

Q: Let’s talk about the marijuana bills that failed in the House yesterday.

Brown: It’s not dead in the Senate. The bills are in the Rules Committee. The reclassification bill is in Rules and, if it comes to the floor, I personally will support it. Obviously sometimes the House passes bills that the Senate doesn’t. There is still a lot of interest in the Senate in the reclassification bill. For the legalization bill, I see very little interest in that. I just don’t think there’s much interest.

Q: I spoke with the House Public Safety Committee chairman, Rep. Chris Hurst, yesterday. He told me the bills were not going to come up again in the House this session, at all.

Brown: That’s his decision. I think we waste resources in the criminal justice system sometimes with respect to some of the resources that go into the prosecution of adults with a small amount of marijuana in their possession. It’s a question of priorities. In tight budget times I think it’s important to consider if we’ve got our priorities set straight. So I think that’s what the bill brings up.

Q: What else are you working on?

Brown: The budget is kind of the overwhelming issue that we’re all working on. In terms of policy issues, the other major issue would be education policy and continuing forward on creating a new, more transparent school funding formula, and doing some things that would better qualify us for federal education funding.

Q: One of those issues is charter schools. Where do you stand on that?

Brown: We have flexibility and alternatives within our schools. My son goes to an alternative high school in Spokane. Given that the voters have already rejected charter schools, I don’t see the Legislature going there this session. When we compete for federal dollars, we may not get full points for charter schools, but we will get high marks.  I believe there’s still hope for us to put a competitive application forward.

Q: What else is required to get the state to the point where we can have a competitive application for Race to the Top?

Brown: A statewide plan for addressing a struggling or failing school. Intervention. And some real evaluation for principles and maybe a tighter evaluation system for teachers.

We had a great presentation in caucus yesterday about what the Governor’s bill and Senator McAuliffe’s ideas are around this and I think we will get comprehensive legislation out of the senate on it.

Tags: Budget, cuts, marijuana, public safety, taxes