Thursday Q&A: Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Morris

Today’s Q&A is with House Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Morris, who I spoke with this afternoon.

With a week left in session, Morris talked to me about taxes, the budget, the possibility of not getting out on time, and how he handles long floor sessions.

(Apologies on the late hour — there was an income tax hearing to attend to.)

Q: First, I have to ask if you’ve seen the proposal to create a high-earners income tax and drop the sales tax.

Morris: No, I haven’t. We’ve just started to do some I think vote counting amongst our caucus and there’s two or three camps on taxes. And you know right now I would say as a single group the non-sales tax group is probably the largest single group but the other two are split between how they’d vote on a sales tax.

Q: So would that bill have a realistic chance in the House?

Morris: I think first we have to agree to the budget and what that new revenue may be and what it may buy back. I think something that’s not been widely talked about is not adopting a budget at all is an option. We have a supplemental budget -– if we didn’t adopt one and if we got into a cash flow issue, the governor has the authority to start doing across-the-board cuts.

Q: Really? And that’s a viable option?

Morris: Well, if we can’t get people together with either an agreed to budget number or what taxes are need to buy state services back then that would be an option. That would probably be the most draconian but one that would be the most expedient.

If nothing moved from this point in the different — I hate to use the word factions, but I call them camps — I would say that that’s a possibility and it’s something that you may see talked about more in order to get people talking and to realize the seriousness of not making decisions.

Q: So what are your thoughts on a sales tax?

Morris: I’ve opposed it and there’s just kind of a balance. I’ve been an advocate of trying to tax discretionary activities. The sales tax is kind of the opposite of that, where you tax everyone broadly.

The sales tax is one of the most regressive taxes we have. If you need a car to get to work every day and your car breaks down and you have to buy a car no matter what and it’s an extra percent sales tax, that’s an extra percent you have to pay up front. Whereas someone doesn’t have to buy chocolate, you don’t have to have plastic surgery done that’s not related to an accident. I think from an economic point of view, it’s better to tax what people choose to do with their money – not what people have to do.

Q: Where is the House at with the budget?

Morris: Well, it’s kind of the same problem on the revenue side, which is that you’ve got to get a number and then you have to figure out what is it that you really what to fund.

So there are two moving targets right now: What is the spending level going to be in a supplemental budget and secondly how much revenue do you need to meet that?

Q: And both of those targets are still moving?

Morris: Yes.

There’s a lot of consensus probably around the $800 to $850 million level for an amount of a new revenue package to buy back some things.

Q: Beyond that, is it gridlock?

Morris: I would not say it is gridlock. We’ve gone through a long process of trying to figure out any efficiency we can put in place.

As an editorial comment: One of the challenges we’ve faced is that we’ve gone from 18^th largest state to 12^th largest state. We’re meeting the same number of days we did back in the early 80s. When you’re trying to talk about doing efficiencies – say, breaking apart an agency like DSHS – it takes more than a couple weeks.

I like to say, sometimes the legislative session is more like a drive by than a deliberative body.

That being said, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at what we’ve spent our money on and things we can actually do to get our shot at the goal here. In the last week and a half, we’ve started talking about some of these numbers and having long caucus discussions to see where the center of our caucus is at. That should be concluded in the next couple of days as we try to prioritize spending and taxes.

Q: Is it still possible to get things taken care of in the next week? One lawmaker said in order for that to happen, the House and Senate would need to be in agreement on major pieces of the budget and tax package by Monday at the latest.

Morris: That’s fairly accurate and I also have to say that a lot of these calendars are based on when we used to actually push a lot of paper around. The primary efficiency we implemented last year to reduce paper was to go electronic. So we don’t have to do all the printing we used to. It would actually be a lot slower if we were still printing, but we have electronic devices and use PDF files. We don’t have the same number of days we used to get things printed.

So, saying all that, just to get to the, I guess the answer – if we start getting into Tuesday and we don’t have agreement, it’s going to be tough to get out by Thursday.

I think you’ll see some House agreement by the end of the week.

Q: You seem to maintain a sense of humor throughout this and when you’re presiding over the House.

Morris: I try to. The big thing I try to be is consistent. I think since I’ve started presiding, when I feel they’re violating the rules, I try to tell them what the rule is. Or when someone raises a point of order, I try to consistently apply that. I’ve had members from both sides – particularly Republicans – say I really appreciate the job you’re doing, we feel like we’re being treated fairly.

The tough thing is when it’s a controversial bill to stand up there for 4 or 5 hours and be pounded. It’s hard to stand there and have people talk to you like that and not take things personally.

It’s amazing. It’s not hard to stand there so long, just the fact that you have to listen for so long. I say it’s like sitting in the airport for a year and half. There are a lot of things you have to track on and I just try to be consistent and not take things personally.

I do try to inject humor into it when appropriate. I gotta be somewhat judicious in making comments because it can always go the wrong way very quickly. So I monitor the temperature of the room and try to keep it at 98.6.  Sometimes a little humor helps, but it’s not always appropriate. I think in my sense of humor there’s English influence to that.

Q: I also wanted to ask you about the bail bill. You told Jessica Gao on The Impact that you thought Gov. Chris Gregoire should get involved. The Senate passed a bill today – do you know if it’s one that was agreed upon by the House? Or is this debate still going?

Morris: Honestly, I don’t know. We just got done on the floor.  We had a water subsidy fight on the floor that was quite a rugged debate. We reduced the amount of state subsidy — how much we spend — on water permit processing down to 50 percent.

It was my bill on the floor calendar. There was also a Rockefeller bill – 6762 – and Phil’s bill dealt with part of that issue about the backlog and some reforms. And my bill dealt with backlog and was complimentary to that. We amended this in and had a huge debate.

The water bill – my amendment as adopted – sets up a process where there’s a $200 dollar good standing fee to clear out 30 percent of the backlog in 6 months. Because we think about 30 percent of the backlogged applications are from people who are dead now or no longer around.

And then that fee applies toward the amount they’ll owe when their water application is actually processed. If the fee is $750, that $200 will be applied to that. Currently, the state subsidizes that fee at 98 percent. This takes it to 50 percent.

We have a huge backlog. It’s a very different debate because, as you know, water’s a very controversial issue. In this bill, 80 percent of the people are going to have their fee between $750 and $1,500 – that’s for people to use 5,000 gallons a day or more. These are not a small water user. The other 20 percent would pay $1,500 to $35,000. Those are water districts, cities and huge water users. Proportionally, it’s a consistent schedule. It immediately clears out 30 percent of the backlog. We have about 7,000 applications in now – that’s off the top of my head. This will drop the total backlog. My previous bill would have taken 5 years to get through the backlog, now this is half the fee, so it will take about 10 years.

Q: Anything else you want to say?

Morris: We’re very much on the margin of making some substantive government reform changes and having a budget that can actually accomplish that. The other tough thing here is the amount of time we have getting in some fundamental reforms hard to do in 60 days. The supplemental budget is to tune things up. It’s become a challenge just for the time we have and then add to that the number of initiatives – it seems like we’re totally rewriting a budget every year during a short session. I’m not advocating for a full-time Legislature, but some number of days to do a better job.

Tags: Morris, Thursday Q&A