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Senate budget would cut deep into education

The Columbian
Published: April 13, 2011, 12:00am

OLYMPIA (AP) — The Washington state Senate rolled out a proposed two-year state budget Tuesday that includes cutting an additional $250 million from K-12 education.

In all, the Senate budget proposal slashes $4.8 billion in state spending as it tries to fill in a $5.1 billion deficit in the next two-year period. It also includes more than $450 million in fund transfers, among other things, and leaves an ending balance of about $740 million.

The Senate plan assumes $250 million in savings from wage reductions for teachers. But teacher salaries include a combination of local, federal and state money. Under the proposal, school districts would have to decide how to deal with the reduction in money.

The Senate also has a plan to penalize school districts with high truancy rates — something budget writers assume will save another $95 million.

Combined for about $345 million, those two cuts to education are the key difference between the Senate budget and the House proposal, which didn’t include the teacher pay cut.

Last week, the House rolled out its budget proposal, which cuts $4.4 billion in spending. It also included a plan to privatize the state’s liquor distribution, earning the state a projected $300 million. But that idea has gotten a lukewarm response from Gov. Chris Gregoire and it wasn’t included in the Senate proposal.

“It’s not a budget of choice, it’s a budget of necessity. Within that necessity, we have acted responsibly,” said Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means committee.

The Senate budget is the last piece of the puzzle as lawmakers head for tough negotiations on state spending in the last two weeks of the legislative session.

The state is struggling to recover from the impact of the Great Recession, and billions have been cut from the state budget over the last four years. In March, the state economist said Washington is projected to lose an additional $780 million in tax collections during the next two years.

The revenue forecast projects total state revenue of more than $32 billion in the next two years.

“As people scrutinize and criticize this plan I hope they will keep in mind that no previous budget has had so much revenue to allocate. It’s just that the state’s spending commitments had accumulated to such a level that even a record amount of revenue could not keep up,” said Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, the GOP’s budget negotiator.

Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, the House’s Ways and Means committee chairman, said in a statement he was troubled by the slash in K-12 funding.

The Washington Education Association, a teachers union, had a swift response, saying the budget will end up hurting children’s education.

“It cuts teacher pay, eliminates funding for more than 1,000 teachers and crams more students into already-overcrowded classrooms. We have the third-most-crowded classrooms in the country, and this budget will make things worse for our kids. Let’s be clear: This budget will hurt kids,” said Rich Wood, WEA spokesman.

The Senate plan also mandates more furloughs for state employees, based on salary. Workers who make between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an extra 16 hours of furloughs, for example.

The Senate budget also cuts more deeply into Disability Lifeline, a state program that aids disabled adults. Under the Senate plan, the program would see $180 million in savings from eliminating cash grants to program recipients. Instead, the program would switch to housing vouchers. The program also sees a reduction in enrollment in its medical program, for savings of more than $50 million.

The Basic Health Plan, the state’s health care program for the poor, would see a $122 million cut from reducing enrollment to 34,000 people in 2013.

About $1.2 billion in savings would come from not funding two education initiatives that increase teacher pay and reduce classroom sizes. Lawmakers have not funded these two voter-approved mandates during the recession.

Under the Senate plan, higher education sees a large cut of more than $530 million. Like the House and Gregoire, Senate budget writers say the cut can be offset by hiking tuition rates at the state’s universities and colleges but in the Senate proposal tuition rates are increased more than in the other plans. The University of Washington, Washington State University and Western Washington University would see 16 percent tuition hikes; Central Washington and The Evergreen State College would see a 14 percent increase. Community college tuition would go up by 12 percent.

The Senate’s plan also halts automatic increases to state employee retirement plans to save $361 million and takes another $212 million from kindergarten through 4th grade class-size programs. Some $177 million is saved from cutting state employee salaries by 3 percent.

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