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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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In Our View: Deadlines Do Matter

Legislature must stop treating expensive special sessions as business as usual

The Columbian
Published:

The underlying issue of this year’s legislative special session is that it wasn’t all that special. As lawmakers slogged into a third overtime session, extending a scheduled 105-day session to 176 days, they unwittingly brought up questions about whether the state should reconsider how it conducts its business.

For nearly a century, as dictated by the 1889 state constitution, Washington’s Legislature met every other year for a scheduled 60-day session. In 1979, 60.5 percent of the electorate approved a constitutional amendment that created annual sessions, with budget-writing (odd-numbered) years requiring 105 days and intermittent years calling for a 60-day session. That has devolved into wishful thinking. The 2011 session included two special sessions for a total of 150 days; the 2013 session went into three overtime periods (including three days in November to provide a tax break for Boeing) and a total of 156 days; and this year set a record for longest single-year session in state history.

Yep, nothing special about it.

So, is it realistic to expect lawmakers to devise a budget in 3½ months? And what are the drawbacks if they don’t? This year’s extra sessions cost taxpayers some $600,000 in per diem and travel reimbursements for lawmakers, along with temporary staffing costs. Considering that the Legislature eventually passed a $38 billion biennial budget, the extra expense is relatively minor — and yet it is enough to generate frustration among taxpayers.

The fact is that lawmakers convened in Olympia with a constitutionally mandated deadline and then managed to ignore it. Budget discussions remained a behind-closed-doors afterthought until deep into the session while other issues occupied the forefront. Once budget negotiations took center stage, they were rife with political posturing from both parties that indicated little sense of urgency.

Part of that is due to the fact that the Senate is under the control of Republicans, while the House is led by Democrats. This actually is a good thing. Having two-party rule might have made the process more difficult, but it eventually forced a compromise that included victories and concessions on both sides of the aisle. Those victories and concessions — along with the debates that created them — benefit taxpayers, with the acknowledgment that compromise requires time and democracy can be messy.

But lawmakers must be more cognizant of their duty to devise a budget in the constitutionally mandated 105-day time frame. Treating a special session as an inevitability amounts to legislative malpractice and a shirking of their duty to taxpayers and to the state agencies waiting to learn how much funding they will have at their disposal.

With that in mind, state Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, said she is crafting legislation to curb special sessions. Her idea is to prohibit special sessions from being used to forge the general budget, and if an agreement is not reached by the end of the session, the previous biennial budget remains in place for two years. This might or might not be a solution, but at least Rivers is trying to generate discussion.

The key is whether other lawmakers also view the situation as problematic. They should. Routinely failing to meet clearly spelled out deadlines would not be acceptable in private industry; it would not be acceptable for students working on projects; and it should not be acceptable for elected representatives tasked with doing the work of the people. When special sessions stop being special and start being business as usual, the public is poorly served.

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