End of Washington’s fiscal year looms as lawmakers disclose details of budget deal

While those watch­ing out for the release of the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture’s final state bud­get were sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed this after­noon, details were bub­bling out about the Leg­is­la­ture’s plans to address McCleary. Leg­isla­tive staff, how­ev­er, are still scram­bling to actu­al­ly pro­duce a bud­get that nego­tia­tors have agreed to in order avoid a state gov­ern­ment shut­down. Then it must be vot­ed on.

Since the 2012 McCleary deci­sion came out, law­mak­ers have been under court orders to amply bol­ster fund­ing for Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools. But they have been unable to agree on how to get there, in large part because Repub­li­cans have stub­born­ly clung to their “no new tax­es” mantra. This has result­ed in the Court hold­ing the Leg­is­la­ture in con­tempt for neglect­ing its responsibilities.

As in past long ses­sions, a fail­ure to even begin nego­ti­a­tions in earnest has left Wash­ing­ton cit­i­zens wait­ing over mul­ti­ple extend­ed ses­sions to eval­u­ate any deci­sions com­ing from the Legislature.

In impromp­tu meet­ings with reporters on Thurs­day, law­mak­ers released state­ments con­firm­ing they’ve agreed to a poten­tial state prop­er­ty tax increase of rough­ly 81 cents per $1,000 of assessed val­ue. Pub­lic teach­ers can expect to see aver­age salary increas­es of approx­i­mate­ly $10,000, while pub­lic school admin­is­tra­tors would be receiv­ing over $30,000 of aver­age salary increas­es by 2021.

These increas­es would include adjust­ments for salaries giv­en the res­i­den­tial val­ues in a school dis­trict exceed the nation­al aver­age. Accord­ing­ly, begin­ning in 2020, salary for all school staff would adjust based on infla­tion rates.

There is also a $644.2 mil­lion boost to state appro­pri­a­tions on school pro­grams for gift­ed stu­dents, stu­dents who fall under the pover­ty line, and stu­dents who fall behind cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic standards.

School dis­tricts and unions rep­re­sent­ing teach­ers won’t have much time to ana­lyze the impacts of this bud­get con­sid­er­ing a final vote is sched­uled to take place in each house by mid­night tomor­row night (Fri­day, June 30th).

Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools (SPS) released a pub­lic state­ment stat­ing, “It will be days [from when the bud­get is offi­cial­ly released] before we know if the new plans will ful­ly sup­port the edu­ca­tion­al needs of SPS students.”

Yet no pub­lic hear­ings will be held on the offi­cial bud­get, or its McCleary fund­ing com­po­nent, which is expect­ed to be released Fri­day around 8 AM.

This lack of pub­lic input has inten­si­fied con­cerns of both leg­isla­tive effi­cien­cy and fis­cal trans­paren­cy.

Reporters in Olympia have attempt­ed to address this issue with lawmakers.

“The deci­sions are made,” said State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive June Robin­son, D‑Everett, one of the bud­get nego­tia­tors. “What we’re wait­ing for now is staff to do all the work that needs to be done to bal­ance everything.”

Robin­son said she doesn’t antic­i­pate a pub­lic hear­ing on the bud­get before it gets a floor vote. But peo­ple have had months to vet the ideas that went into the deal, she added, since it’s a com­bi­na­tion of the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic plans passed ear­li­er this year by the Sen­ate and House, respectively.

“I feel like we were able to use pub­lic input to devel­op the final com­pro­mise bud­get,” she said. “I under­stand that oth­er peo­ple might not feel that way.”

Law­mak­ers say their num­ber one pri­or­i­ty is to avoid a state gov­ern­ment shut­down, which would be trig­gered Sat­ur­day in the absence of a new state oper­at­ing budget.

Had a deal been nego­ti­at­ed ear­li­er, how­ev­er, there would have been plen­ty of time for crit­i­cal scruti­ny and pub­lic com­ment. The Leg­is­la­ture is now in its third spe­cial ses­sion. It blew through two peri­ods of over­time with­out accom­plish­ing much of any­thing. And only now, with the fis­cal year about to end, has a deal been reached. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many details still aren’t avail­able and won’t be until tomorrow.