Badly-behaved Senate Republicans are an embarrassment to the State of Washington

It’s only been ten days since the six­ty-fifth Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture con­vened for its long ses­sion, but already, the bad behav­ior of Sen­ate Repub­li­cans sug­gests it’s going to be very dif­fi­cult for the state’s law­mak­ing branch to get much of any­thing done before the ses­sion is sched­uled to end on April 23rd.

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion that their rep­re­sen­ta­tives will work togeth­er to gov­ern despite their dif­fer­ences, and while Repub­li­cans (who have a ten­u­ous grip on the Sen­ate) occa­sion­al­ly pay lip ser­vice to this idea, it is evi­dent from their actions that they rel­ish cre­at­ing grid­lock and resent not hav­ing total con­trol over state gov­ern­ment like their fed­er­al coun­ter­parts do.

The Leg­is­la­ture has seri­ous, press­ing issues to attend to. Rec­og­niz­ing this, Gov­er­nor Inslee, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son and House Democ­rats have been endeav­or­ing to put wor­thy ideas on the table to address neglect­ed pub­lic ser­vices like our schools and men­tal health sys­tem while propos­ing reforms that would make state gov­ern­ment more account­able and our crim­i­nal jus­tice codes more humane.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, how­ev­er, have been busy embar­rass­ing our state with their self-serv­ing polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing and pet­ty antics. Here are a slew of examples.

Exhib­it A… Mark Schoesler’s rude­ness to the press corps: 

It’s only the sec­ond week of the leg­isla­tive ses­sion and state Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mark Schoesler already is bit­ing the heads off jour­nal­ists who asked him when the Repub­li­can plan for fix­ing the way the state pays for edu­ca­tion will be ready.

“That’s none of your busi­ness,” Schoesler snapped at a Tues­day news conference.

Actu­al­ly, Sen­a­tor Schoesler, it’s every­one’s busi­ness. Where is your plan?

Exhib­it B… Dino Rossi’s refusal to accom­mo­date mem­bers of the Lake Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion who had trav­eled to Olympia on their day off to meet with him fol­low­ing Mon­day’s Ral­ly for Stu­dent Civ­il Rights & Amply Fund­ed Schools.

Sen­a­tor Rossi just blew off an entire del­e­ga­tion of edu­ca­tion advo­cates from Lake Wash­ing­ton here to talk to him about the need to ful­ly fund pub­lic edu­ca­tion and uphold all of our stu­dents’ civ­il rights!

He looked at all of us and accused us of being fif­teen min­utes late and left to go to lunch. You want to talk about being late, Sen­a­tor Rossi, you and the leg­is­la­ture you have been a part of repeat­ed­ly are more than 40 years late! Hope your lunch was impor­tant, obvi­ous­ly you don’t have the best inter­est of your con­stituents and the chil­dren of Lake Wash­ing­ton in mind.

Dur­ing a pri­or meet­ing orga­nized by the PTA that did take place as sched­uled, Rossi report­ed­ly took up most of the time — Pam Roach style — by talk­ing instead of lis­ten­ing, accord­ing to an activist who was in the room.

Exhib­it C… Michael Baum­gart­ner’s dis­re­spect for our Con­sti­tu­tion:

In a fair­ly bla­tant attempt to get some atten­tion for him­self and steer pub­lic dis­course away from ful­ly fund­ing our pub­lic schools, extrem­ist right wing Sen­a­tor Michael Baum­gart­ner of Spokane has pre­filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would repeal the mem­o­rable open­ing words of Arti­cle IX of the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion (“It is the para­mount duty of the state to make ample pro­vi­sion for the edu­ca­tion of all chil­dren resid­ing with­in its bor­ders, with­out dis­tinc­tion or pref­er­ence on account of race, col­or, caste, or sex.“).

Arti­cle IX has been with us since state­hood and its pre­am­ble is one of the most beau­ti­ful pas­sages in our entire Con­sti­tu­tion. But Michael Baum­gart­ner wants to scrap it because he does­n’t believe in amply fund­ed schools for all children.

Appalling.

Exhib­it D… Doug Erick­sen’s mean-spir­it­ed scheme to crim­i­nal­ize civ­il dis­obe­di­ence:

A pro­pos­al by state Sen. Doug Erick­sen to increase penal­ties for pro­test­ers is a bad idea com­ing at a ter­ri­ble time.

The Fer­n­dale Repub­li­can should aban­don his pro­pos­al to “crim­i­nal­ize” protests that cause eco­nom­ic harm and “cre­ate a new crime of eco­nom­ic terrorism.

Now is the time for elect­ed lead­ers to help peo­ple move past the pres­i­den­tial campaign’s divi­sive rhetoric and get back to work­ing on real prob­lems fac­ing the state and country.

Brand­ing pro­test­ers as ter­ror­ists is not leg­is­lat­ing to help the peo­ple and busi­ness­es of Wash­ing­ton. It is chum­ming the pool of hyper­par­ti­sans by gen­er­at­ing inflam­ma­to­ry head­lines with a pro­pos­al unlike­ly ever to become law.

It must be under­stood that Doug Erick­sen is a tool of big oil com­pa­nies, which have facil­i­ties in his dis­trict. He seems will­ing to do absolute­ly any­thing for the fos­sil fuels indus­try, and he ridicu­lous­ly inter­prets crit­i­cism of the likes of BP as though it were some kind of per­son­al attack on him­self. (I’ve sparred with him a League of Women Vot­ers forum in Belling­ham, so this obser­va­tion is based on my own experience.)

Exhib­it E… Mike Pad­den’s unwill­ing­ness to com­mit to hold­ing a much-need­ed hear­ing on agency request leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish exe­cu­tions:

Last year, Sen. Mike Pad­den, the Spokane Repub­li­can who chairs the Judi­cia­ry com­mit­tee, did not allow a hear­ing on a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the leg­isla­tive conversation.

On Wednes­day, Pad­den said he would “con­sid­er hold­ing a hear­ing on the death penal­ty bill if and when the House,” which is con­trolled by Democ­rats, pass­es the bill first.

The death penal­ty is too impor­tant for leg­isla­tive lead­ers like Pad­den to play par­ti­san games.

Indeed. Bob Fer­gu­son’s leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty — which has the back­ing of Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mark Milos­cia and Mau­reen Walsh — could pass the Sen­ate if it were brought to the floor and giv­en a vote, pro­po­nents say. Even sup­port­ers of state spon­sored-killing, like Steve O’Ban, say the leg­is­la­tion deserves a hear­ing. But there’s Mike Pad­den say­ing he won’t even give the leg­is­la­tion a hear­ing unless the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives pass­es the com­pan­ion bill!

Mike Pad­den’s behav­ior has been, and con­tin­ues to be, indefensible.

Exhib­it F… Joe Fain’s bizarre argu­ment against free­ing school dis­tricts from hav­ing to wor­ry about the “levy cliff” man­u­fac­tured by the Leg­is­la­ture years ago:

A pro­pos­al to keep the levy lid at its cur­rent lev­el through Jan­u­ary 2019 — delay­ing the reduc­tion in tax col­lec­tions by one year — passed out of the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, but with sup­port only from Democrats.

Last year, a pro­pos­al to con­tin­ue the levy lid lift for one extra year cleared the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled House with broad bipar­ti­san sup­port, but stalled in the state Sen­ate, which is led by Republicans.

Sen. Joe Fain, the Sen­ate major­i­ty floor leader, said he shares House Repub­li­cans’ con­cerns about the polit­i­cal con­se­quences of post­pon­ing the levy cliff. “If we were going to solve this cri­sis, as I believe we will, we have to keep the pres­sure on,” said Fain, R‑Auburn.

Keep the pres­sure on? When has that ever worked in the past?

Wash­ing­ton’s school fund­ing cri­sis could have been solved years ago, but Repub­li­cans weren’t will­ing to make the invest­ments nec­es­sary to amply fund our schools and they remain unwill­ing to make those invest­ments now.

The least Repub­li­cans can do is join Democ­rats in remov­ing this imped­i­ment to school dis­tricts’ bud­get­ing and plan­ning, since the Leg­is­la­ture has failed to com­ply with the Supreme Court’s orders to get our schools fund­ed for four straight years (and failed to uphold its own past promis­es for far longer than that).

Final­ly, to build on that point about Repub­li­cans being unwill­ing to make the nec­es­sary invest­ments in our schools, we have Exhib­it H:

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ vote to require a two-thirds vote for pas­sage of tax increas­es gave us pause last week as the Wash­ing­ton Leg­is­la­ture opened its new session.

The fore­most chal­lenge in the 105-day ses­sion is to ful­ly fund K‑12 pub­lic schools, which could end the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al prac­tice of using local vot­er-approved levies to sub­si­dize teacher pay and benefits.

There is a marked lack of una­nim­i­ty about how much is need­ed, let alone how to pay for it. By putting the two-thirds-vote road­block in place, the 25 mem­bers of the Sen­ate Major­i­ty Coali­tion Cau­cus could well gum up leg­isla­tive action and thwart the majority’s will lat­er in the year — that is, if their action on the two-thirds rule is even legal.

(It’s not).

This is hard­ly the first ses­sion in which Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have shown a lack of respect for the Con­sti­tu­tion, or their Demo­c­ra­t­ic peers, or the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton in gen­er­al. There were hopes expressed in advance of this year’s ses­sion in many quar­ters that 2017 might be dif­fer­ent — that Sen­ate Repub­li­cans might be more mind­ful of their oblig­a­tions as elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and more hum­ble fol­low­ing Steve Lit­zow’s loss last Novem­ber to Lisa Well­man in the 41st District.

Sad­ly, it’s appar­ent Sen­ate Repub­li­cans still pre­fer polit­i­cal the­ater, games­man­ship, and obstruc­tion to gov­ern­ing. Their major­i­ty is now just as frag­ile as that of the House Democ­rats, yet they seem as arro­gant as ever.

Since Repub­li­cans won’t stop behav­ing bad­ly, it looks like it’ll be up to vot­ers of the East­side to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion for 2018 by tak­ing away their majority.

Vot­ers in my leg­isla­tive dis­trict, the 45th, will have the chance to sin­gle­hand­ed­ly fire the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans lat­er this year if they select a Demo­c­rat to take the place of appoint­ed Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Dino Rossi. The 45th is among four dis­tricts that must, by law, hold spe­cial state Sen­ate elec­tions this year due to vacancies.

The oth­er three dis­tricts (48th, 37th, 31st) are like­ly to remain in the hands of the same par­ty, so the bal­ance of pow­er in the Sen­ate would most like­ly be unaffected.

But the 45th hap­pens to be an increas­ing­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict that is over­due for a change in representation.

Last year, vot­ers in the 45th enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed Democ­rats up and down the bal­lot. In leg­isla­tive races, the Repub­li­cans could­n’t find any­one will­ing to take on Lar­ry Springer, while their oppo­nent for Roger Good­man — Sam­m­mish City Coun­cilmem­ber Ramiro Valder­ra­ma — could­n’t crack 40% of the vote.

If Democ­rats do suc­ceed in tak­ing the 45th, they will become the major­i­ty par­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate as of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of this year’s local elec­tion around this year’s Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day — and the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, who count Tim Shel­don as one of their own, will become the minor­i­ty party.