OLYMPIA — House Republicans plan to release their budget proposals Monday, even as some Southwest Washington members say passing any budget in the special session will not be achievable.
The Legislature has had minimal floor activity in the two weeks since the special session, began but House Republicans hope to move the process forward with their proposals, said Rep. Ann Rivers, R-La Center.
“I’m very optimistic,” Rivers said. “Hopefully it’ll be a good place where we can find places we can rally together.”
The Republican proposal will likely include a plan to save levy equalization, which is up for a $151.9 million reduction under Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed budget.
“We’re going to have a budget that we believe does a better job for education and doesn’t affect levy equalization like that. There are some alternatives,” said Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver.
However, other legislators have doubts about cooperation on both sides of the aisle and suspect that no budget will get passed in the special session.
Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, said he had no expectations on reaching a budget agreement by Christmas, partly because many legislators will be leaving early for holiday and partly because of partisan disagreement.
“We have an immense task in front of us and I think it’s important that we do it together. We’re not going to accomplish that goal in the first 30 days, we’re just not. Too many voices and too many different priorities,” Moeller said.
Members of the House and Senate have received pressure from the Office of Financial Management in the past week, urging legislators to act quickly on the budget. However, Moeller said it was not something he felt comfortable rushing.
“I understand that every day that we don’t deal with the budget it gets more expensive. If it was just numbers we would have cut the budget and gone home, but there are people, families, children, seniors; they are what those numbers mean. There are priorities that have to be made and that’s not going to happen before Christmas,” Moeller said.
“It’s not going to happen at the snail’s pace they’re moving,” Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama said. “I’ve got a sense we’re going to be here a long time.”
As time passes, the likelihood of a revenue package making the March ballot begins to disintegrate. If legislators are not able to come to an agreement on revenue by the end of December it will not make the scheduled March 13 election day.
“What I would like to see at the end of the day is that we will come up with a balanced budget and we’ll have a good shot at passing a revenue package,” Moeller said. “Honestly, we could do all that if we had the cooperation of the minority but we can’t. That is going to be a problem.”
According to Orcutt, passing a budget with a revenue package on the ballot poses some risks.
“I’m worried they will put (the revenue package) on the ballot and write the budget with some sort of assumption that it will pass,” Orcutt said. “Then it fails at the ballot box and guess what happens? We’re back in a special session.”
While Orcutt said more should have been done to work on the problem earlier, Moeller doubted calling the session sooner would have done any good, and expected many legislators will leave by the end of next week.
“It just would have cost us $45,000 a day sooner. Honestly I don’t know why we were called back in,” Moeller said.
