Senate re-passed Operating Budget

The Senate is now debating its supplemental operating budget.

“We cannot continue to pit rural communities against the cities,” Sen. Margarita Prentice said. She said it’s easy to do that in debate. She also said people have given their lives for the ability to collectively bargain. She urged her colleagues to vote yes on the budget.

Sen. Joe Zarelli said he’s still a no vote. “We’ll have to raise close to a billion dollars” to pay for the budget, he said. “This budget spends about $350 million more in new policy,” he said.

Sen. Lisa Brown said the “new policy” isn’t really that. She said there are more children in schools and “that doesn’t seem like new policy to me.” She said worker retraining is another “new policy” — but it’s to benefit people who are waiting to go back to work. “Turning that back makes absolutely no sense.”

Sen. Cheryl Pflug said it’s wrong to decide on spending and “then figuring out who they’re going to go and take the money from” to pay for it. “This is the wrong way to do it. Obviously we wouldn’t be here if it was the way that people want to do it,” she said. “I hope that people would consider voting against this and let’s do it right this time.”

Sen. Jim Hargrove: “I don’t have my calculator so I’m not sure how much new policy this counts for, but shortly before session we had a man named Clemmons” who shot four police officers. Hargrove said there is new policy in the budget to address that shooting and another in Skagit County. “Some of the new policy, I think, are things that have passed out of here unanimously.”

Sen. Mike Hewitt said much of the policy is admirable. But, he said, there need to be “offsets” — each time an item is added, something needs to be taken out.

Sen. Linda Evans Parlette said the Senate hasn’t addressed public employee benefits. She said the taxpayers pay 88 percent of state employee’s healthcare costs and that’s not fair. “I’m going to vote no,” she said.

The Senate re-passed the budget 25 to 19, sending it back to the House.

Tags: operating budget