OLYMPIA — Lawmakers only get a short reprieve after wrapping up a two-month legislative session Friday, as they are set to return next week to address an impasse over the supplemental budget.
An unresolved budget means they’ll be back at the Capitol on Monday for the start of an overtime special session that could last up to a month. Gov. Chris Gregoire announced she was calling them back to special session, saying: “We’ve a job to do, we’ve got to get it done.”
“The public’s confidence in them is wholly dependent on whether they get that job done,” she said late Thursday. “They know that.”
The budget drama began last week once Senate Republicans established a philosophical majority in the Senate after three conservative Democrats stood with them on a GOP-crafted budget plan that then passed the Senate but stalled in the House. That chamber passed an alternate plan agreed to by majority Democrats in the House and Senate.
Lawmakers are looking to close a budget gap of about $500 million through the end of the two-year budget cycle ending June 2013, as well as leaving several hundred million dollars in reserves.
The main sticking point between the two sides, Gregoire said, is Republicans’ plan to delay a pension payment by a year, and Democrats’ plan to delay a $330 million payment to school districts by one day.
Gregoire praised lawmakers for several accomplishments during the 60-day session, including the passage of a bill making Washington the seventh state to legalize gay marriage, as well a bill that adds improvement in student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations.
In a statement issued after adjournment, she said that the budget impasse “shouldn’t shroud the incredible accomplishments achieved during this short legislative session.”
It will be the second special session for lawmakers to deal with the supplemental budget.
They spent nearly three weeks in a special session that ended mid-December, weeks before the regular session started in January. Lawmakers initially had been looking at a $2 billion budget problem but addressed some of it in December. They were later helped, in part, by a forecast in February that showed a slight uptick in revenue, and additional savings from a drop in demand for state services, or caseloads.
Republican Sen. Joe Zarelli, of Ridgefield, who wrote the GOP budget plan, complained that leaders from the House still haven’t sat down to negotiate directly with Senate Republicans.
“If the House majority had worked with our coalition at all this week toward a compromise, there might have been a vote in the Senate” on Thursday night, he said in a statement. “Political gamesmanship won’t produce the sustainable budget our state needs, and I hope the upcoming special session is free of it.”
“Resolving our differences will take good faith and a willingness to move to the middle ground,” Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle and chief Democratic budget writer for Senate Democrats, said in a joint press release.
