Washington’s Senate Republicans pass bill transferring education funding to highways

Prov­ing once again that their Fund edu­ca­tion first rhetoric is noth­ing but a false front, Repub­li­cans today pushed a bill through the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate that trans­fers sales tax rev­enue col­lect­ed on trans­porta­tion projects out of the state’s gen­er­al fund and into its high­way fund. Since the gen­er­al fund prin­ci­pal­ly pays for our schools and uni­ver­si­ties, the bill would effec­tive­ly take mon­ey away from edu­ca­tion and put it towards lay­ing asphalt instead.

The final vote on SSB 5990 was twen­ty-six to twen­ty-three, with all Repub­li­cans vot­ing aye and all Democ­rats vot­ing nay. The bill now heads to the House, where it will hope­ful­ly receive the full and com­plete bur­ial that it deserves.

The roll call was as follows:

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Angel, Bai­ley, Baum­gart­ner, Beck­er, Ben­ton, Braun, Brown, Dammeier, Dansel, Erick­sen, Fain, Hewitt, Hill, Hon­ey­ford, King, Lit­zow, Milos­cia, O’Ban, Pad­den, Par­lette, Pear­son, Rivers, Roach, Schoesler, Shel­don, Warnick

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Chase, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Fras­er, Frockt, Habib, Har­grove, Hasegawa, Hat­field, Hobbs, Jaya­pal, Keis­er, Kohl-Welles, Liias, McAu­li­ffe, McCoy, Mul­let, Nel­son, Ped­er­sen, Ranker, Rolfes

Pri­or to the vote on final pas­sage, Sen­ate Democ­rats tried to get the bill amend­ed to pro­hib­it it from tak­ing effect until after the McCleary case has been ful­ly resolved.

The Sen­ate Repub­li­cans vot­ed the amend­ment down, draw­ing a point­ed rejoin­der from Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Prami­la Jaya­pal of Seattle.

“How can the Repub­li­can major­i­ty claim edu­ca­tion fund­ing is their top pri­or­i­ty, and yet blow a bil­lion dol­lar hole in already lim­it­ed resources?” said Jaya­pal, who offered the amend­ment with fel­low Demo­c­rat Rose­mary McAu­li­ffe. “This is bad for our kids, bad for our infra­struc­ture, and it is sim­ply irre­spon­si­ble governing.”

“Leg­is­la­tors on both sides of the aisle came into this ses­sion in agree­ment that our top pri­or­i­ty must be meet­ing our moral and con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to our kids while also ensur­ing that we main­tain the oth­er essen­tial ser­vices that the state pro­vides, from fund­ing high­er edu­ca­tion to safe­ty net ser­vices,” Jaya­pal added.

“With­out any agree­ment on where the dol­lars will come from to fund the needs we cur­rent­ly know we have, this bill gives us an even more giant prob­lem to solve. The readi­ness to for­go such a rea­son­able com­pro­mise on some­thing that would ensure that we fund both edu­ca­tion and trans­porta­tion makes me ques­tion how will­ing the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will be to come up with bal­anced solu­tions on edu­ca­tion fund­ing and the state bud­get in the weeks to come.”

Today’s action by Sen­ate Repub­li­cans reminds us of a speech that Pat­ty Mur­ray used to give, back when she was run­ning for reelec­tion to her third term in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate. Denounc­ing the actions of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Con­gress, she’d declare: They’ve got the wrong priorities! 

Eleven years lat­er, not much has changed. When Repub­li­cans hold pow­er, they either gov­ern irre­spon­si­bly, or not at all. Our coun­try and state suf­fer as a result.

The Wash­ing­ton Supreme Court has already held the Leg­is­la­ture in con­tempt of court for fail­ing to com­ply with its orders to ful­ly fund our pub­lic schools. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have now thumbed their noses at that order by inde­fen­si­bly vot­ing to take mon­ey away from our schools and ear­mark it for new pave­ment. Because, as far as they’re con­cerned, noth­ing is too good for our cars. Nev­er mind our kids.