Republican incompetence jeopardizing 2017–2019 capital budget for Washington State

State leg­is­la­tors may have been able to avoid a state gov­ern­ment shut­down by pass­ing an oper­at­ing bud­get on June 30th, but they are only hours away from fac­ing the con­se­quences of fail­ing to pass a 2017–2019 cap­i­tal bud­get, which will include lay­offs, project delays, and the con­tin­ued denial of an amply fund­ed pub­lic edu­ca­tion to hun­dreds of thou­sands of young Washingtonians.

A day remains before the clock runs out on the third con­sec­u­tive spe­cial ses­sion of the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, which was neces­si­tat­ed by Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ refusal to seri­ous­ly nego­ti­ate an oper­at­ing bud­get with House Democ­rats until a week pri­or to the end of the fis­cal biennium.

House Democ­rats announced today that the Leg­is­la­ture’s four cau­cus­es have reached agree­ment on what the final cap­i­tal bud­get should look like.

“The con­struc­tion bud­get would build $1 bil­lion in new pub­lic schools and cre­ate tens of thou­sands of jobs from Aberdeen to Spokane,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Tharinger (D‑Sequim), Chair of the House Cap­i­tal Bud­get Committee.

“Those projects and jobs are espe­cial­ly impor­tant to fam­i­lies in tim­ber and farm coun­try, which doesn’t have the infra­struc­ture and white-hot econ­o­my of the Seat­tle-Everett-Taco­ma core,” Tharinger added.

“This bud­get builds that infra­struc­ture — schools and col­leges, den­tal clin­ics and men­tal health facil­i­ties, ear­ly learn­ing and local water projects—so that every com­mu­ni­ty in the great state of Wash­ing­ton has a chance to thrive.”

The House vot­ed on its iter­a­tion of the cap­i­tal bud­get last month, but the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate has yet to act.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have been stalling for two rea­sons: first­ly, because run­ning out the clock is their favorite tried-and-test­ed tac­tic for gain­ing lever­age, and sec­ond­ly, because they are not in agree­ment among them­selves as to what they want.

Some of the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans would like to pass a cap­i­tal bud­get and go home.

But oth­er Sen­ate Repub­li­cans want to take a scorched earth approach, hold­ing the cap­i­tal bud­get hostage until they get Democ­rats to capit­u­late on oth­er issues, like a “fix” for the Supreme Court’s Hirst deci­sion, or an over­ride of Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s veto of a busi­ness and occu­pa­tion tax cut for manufacturers.

(In What­com Coun­ty v. Hirst, decid­ed last year, the state’s high­est court ruled that under the Growth Man­age­ment Act, coun­ty gov­ern­ments must inde­pen­dent­ly deter­mine if new wells would neg­a­tive­ly impact pro­tect­ed streams or senior water rights pri­or to approv­ing build­ing per­mits that rely on wells.)

Democ­rats have tried to engage with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans to fig­ure out how to respond to the Hirst deci­sion — to no avail.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have con­tin­u­al­ly said they want a “fix” in response to the court’s rul­ing, but haven’t actu­al­ly put a pro­pos­al on the table.

Mean­while, they have said “no” to poten­tial solu­tions float­ed by the House.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors on both sides of the dome tell NPI they are fed up.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee sig­naled in an after­noon press release that he has like­wise run out of patience with the Sen­ate Republicans.

“Leg­isla­tive lead­ers told me today they have reached an impasse on a bill to address the Hirst deci­sion,” Inslee’s state­ment began. “I asked Sen­ate Repub­li­cans if they would accept a 24-month delay to give prop­er­ty own­ers relief, but they told me they would not. There have been oth­er offers through­out this ses­sion, and as recent­ly as today the House pro­vid­ed the Sen­ate a per­ma­nent fix I would have sup­port­ed, but the Sen­ate has reject­ed those as well.”

“At this point, a twen­ty-four month delay is the best approach to give the Leg­is­la­ture time to eval­u­ate a per­ma­nent fix while giv­ing suf­fer­ing prop­er­ty own­ers imme­di­ate relief. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have used the dra­mat­ic tes­ti­mo­ny of prop­er­ty own­ers such as Zack Nut­ting to make the case for a Hirst fix. And when my office spoke with Zack this week, he agreed that HB 2248, which would pro­vide a 24-month delay, would pro­vide that relief. The 24-month pro­pos­al would ease the uncer­tain­ty and suf­fer­ing of Zack and oth­ers caught in sim­i­lar­ly dif­fi­cult situations.”

His­tor­i­cal­ly, cap­i­tal bud­gets have been large­ly bipar­ti­san affairs, and have been adopt­ed with­out much acri­mo­ny or dif­fi­cul­ty. When the House vot­ed on its cap­i­tal bud­get bill last month, for exam­ple, it passed with only one dis­sent­ing vote.

The only rea­son the cap­i­tal bud­get has not made it the rest of the way to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk is that the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have refused to move it along.

As men­tioned, at least some of them want con­ces­sions in exchange for not gum­ming up state gov­ern­ment, but they can’t col­lec­tive­ly agree on what con­ces­sions they want. And so the Sen­ate is paralyzed.

The Repub­li­cans have the pow­er that comes with a Sen­ate major­i­ty — at least through Novem­ber of this year, when the major­i­ty may flip — but they can­not decide how to wield that pow­er while they still have it. They are fum­bling around in the third bout of over­time with­out a game plan, to bor­row a sports analogy.

There’s no excuse for such incom­pe­tence. Wash­ing­ton’s com­mu­ni­ties need the invest­ments this cap­i­tal bud­get would provide.

The ball is in the Repub­li­cans’ court and there’s no more oppor­tu­ni­ties for stalling or games­man­ship. Gov­er­nor Inslee has made it clear that if the Sen­ate does not vote on a cap­i­tal bud­get, then the state sim­ply won’t have one, at least not in the short term. And Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will take the blame (deserved­ly) for that. They will also take take the blame if the Leg­is­la­ture fails to buy itself some time to craft an envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble response to the Hirst decision.

Tick tock, Repub­li­cans. Time’s up. What are you going to do?