School seismic safety bill passes out of Senate Ways & Means with bonding plan removed

One of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2022 is on the move in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. Today, the pow­er­ful Ways & Means Com­mit­tee amend­ed and advanced a school seis­mic safe­ty grant bill pro­posed by Sen­a­tor David Frockt (D‑46th Dis­trict: Seat­tle) that would pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing to upgrade Wash­ing­ton’s seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble school buildings.

Sen­ate Bill 5933 now heads to the Rules Com­mit­tee. From there, it will like­ly be pulled to the Sen­ate floor for con­sid­er­a­tion by the whole cham­ber. The Sen­ate has until Feb­ru­ary 15th at 5 PM to bring the bill up for floor debate and a vote.

The pur­pose of the leg­is­la­tion is to pro­tect school­child­ren, fac­ul­ty, vol­un­teers, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from geo­log­ic haz­ards by mod­ern­iz­ing decrepit, dan­ger­ous old school build­ings that are vul­ner­a­ble to earth­quakes, tsunamis, and lahars.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion pro­posed using bonds as the fund­ing mech­a­nism for the projects. $500 mil­lion in gen­er­al oblig­a­tion bonds would have been sold by the state, sub­ject to a statewide vote of the peo­ple this November.

Dur­ing a marathon sev­en hour elec­tron­ic com­mit­tee meet­ing, the mem­bers of Ways & Means vot­ed to adopt a new ver­sion of the bill offered by Frockt that:

• Clar­i­fies that ver­ti­cal evac­u­a­tion tow­ers are an eli­gi­ble reme­di­a­tion solu­tion for schools in tsuna­mi haz­ard areas
• Clar­i­fies that “total project cost” means both direct and asso­ci­at­ed indi­rect costs for the reme­di­a­tion solution
• Fix­es tech­ni­cal error ref­er­enc­ing the oper­at­ing bud­get rather than the cap­i­tal budget
• Allows OSPI (the Office of the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion) to stream­line admin­is­tra­tive and pro­ce­dur­al process­es for the Small School Dis­trict Mod­ern­iza­tion grant pro­gram in addi­tion to the SCAP pro­gram for pur­pos­es of coor­di­nat­ing the seis­mic safe­ty program.
• Removes all bond­ing pro­vi­sions includ­ing referendum

With the gen­er­al oblig­a­tion bond­ing pro­vi­sions and ref­er­en­dum gone, the bill no longer sets up a statewide vote of the peo­ple this autumn, but it does still cre­ate a school seis­mic safe­ty grant pro­gram account in the state trea­sury which is “intend­ed to fund projects using tax exempt bonds.”

The roll call on the bill was as follows:

Vot­ing for a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Chris­tine Rolfes, David Frockt, June Robin­son, Andy Bil­lig, Reuven Car­lyle, Steve Con­way, Man­ka Dhin­gra, Bob Hasegawa, Sam Hunt, Karen Keis­er, Mark Mul­let, Jamie Ped­er­sen, Kevin Van De Wege, Lisa Well­man; Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Sharon Brown, Jim Hon­ey­ford, Lyn­da Wil­son, Mark Schoesler, John Braun, Chris Gildon, Ron Muz­za­ll, Ann Rivers, Kei­th Wagoner

Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Lyn­da Wil­son and Sharon Brown orig­i­nal­ly vot­ed against the bill, but changed their votes at the end of the roll call. And Sen­a­tor Jim Hon­ey­ford orig­i­nal­ly vot­ed not to make a rec­om­men­da­tion, but also changed his vote to sup­port the bill, result­ing in a unan­i­mous roll call vote for a “do pass.”

Our team was very glad to see those three Repub­li­can sen­a­tors have a change of heart at the end of the vote and join their col­leagues in vot­ing yea. This is a cause that every­body ought to be able to get behind, regard­less of whether they use a pro­gres­sive or right wing val­ues sys­tem to guide their polit­i­cal thinking.

Sen­a­tor Frock­t’s adopt­ed sub­sti­tute is below if you’d like to read it. At this Draftable link, you can com­pare the orig­i­nal and revised ver­sions.

52% of vot­ers sur­veyed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute back in Novem­ber said that they thought upgrad­ing Wash­ing­ton’s seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble schools was a state respon­si­bil­i­ty, while only 29% said they thought it was pri­mar­i­ly a local respon­si­bil­i­ty. NPI unveiled this polling on Mon­day at SB 5399’s pub­lic hear­ing in the Sen­ate Ways & Means Com­mit­tee.

Assum­ing the full Sen­ate adopts this bill, it would land in the House by mid-Feb­ru­ary, and would then need to be act­ed upon by the Leg­is­la­ture’s larg­er cham­ber before it could go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to be signed into law.

The 2022 leg­isla­tive ses­sion runs through March 10th.