Senate Republicans kill effort to allow future school bonds to pass with a simple majority

A con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would have changed the thresh­old for pas­sage of school bonds in Wash­ing­ton from three-fifths with a min­i­mum turnout of forty per­cent to a sim­ple major­i­ty has died on the floor of the State Sen­ate thanks to the oppo­si­tion of Mark Schoesler and his Repub­li­can caucus.

Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion 8201, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Lisa Well­man (D‑41st Dis­trict: Mer­cer Island, Belle­vue, New­cas­tle, Sam­mamish) received the sup­port of the entire Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, which con­sists of twen­ty-eight members.

How­ev­er, lack­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port, it could not move forward.

That’s because, while the thresh­old for pas­sage of bills under Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 is twen­ty-five votes, the thresh­old for pas­sage of con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments under Arti­cle XXIII is thir­ty-three votes, or two-thirds of the Senate.

For SJR 8201 to have passed the Sen­ate, at least five Repub­li­cans would have had to vote aye. The amend­ment then would have need­ed to receive at least nine Repub­li­can votes in the House, plus the entire House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in order to pass there and be sub­mit­ted for rat­i­fi­ca­tion at the next gen­er­al election.

The roll call, a par­ty-line vote, was as follows:

Roll Call
SJR 8201
School dis­trict bonds
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
3/12/2019

Yeas: 28; Nays: 21

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, McCoy, Mul­let, Nguyen, Palum­bo, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Takko, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Bai­ley, Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, O‘Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, Walsh, War­nick, Wil­son (Lyn­da), Zeiger

“We’ve been hear­ing from schools for years, for decades, that we need to change the six­ty per­cent require­ment for school bond pas­sage,” Well­man said.

“Mean­while, stu­dent health and safe­ty is being put at risk as school dis­tricts are unable to raise the funds for nec­es­sary school improvements.

“We’ve heard sto­ries of black mold, of roofs cav­ing in, and still a minor­i­ty of this body is keep­ing us from mak­ing this mean­ing­ful change.”

“This [amend­ment] is real­ly about local con­trol,” she observed. “Often­times, a large major­i­ty of a com­mu­ni­ty sup­ports a bond — fifty-one, fifty-five or fifty-nine per­cent. And still, the bond fails and school dis­tricts don’t have the fund­ing to make improve­ments or build new schools. It’s dis­ap­point­ing that some sen­a­tors don’t trust their local com­mu­ni­ties enough to make this impor­tant change.”

We agree. It’s a real shame that no Repub­li­cans were will­ing to restore major­i­ty rule as the gov­ern­ing thresh­old for pas­sage of school bonds. It makes no sense that a sub­ma­jor­i­ty of the elec­torate in each school dis­trict should have con­trol of the out­come of a bond mea­sure. Major­i­ty votes are suf­fi­cient to elect leg­is­la­tors, pass ini­tia­tives, approve ref­er­en­da, and even rat­i­fy con­sti­tu­tion­al amendments.

A major­i­ty vote should be suf­fi­cient to pass a school bond, too.