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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Camden: Education funding more a conundrum than a crisis

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With a significant part of the state in flames and entire towns being evacuated, this is no time to throw the word “crisis” around lightly.

So it must be noted first and foremost that when the group that runs the state Senate invoked the “C” word Friday, they mean a crisis of a more theoretical nature.

The Majority Coalition Caucus foresees a constitutional crisis, contending the state Supreme Court usurped the Legislature’s role in deciding how the state should spend some of our money.

Late last week they asked leaders of the other legislative gaggles — House Democrats, House Republicans and Senate Democrats — to join them in a yet-to-be determined counterattack to the perceived invasion of the court into their territory over public school funding.

In a detailed missive, 18 Senate Republicans plus Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, laid out a case that by telling the Legislature it was falling down on its constitutional duty to adequately pay for public schools — then giving lawmakers short shrift when they ponied up a record amount of new money for education by demanding a plan for completing the task — the court was treating them like the Rodney Dangerfield of co-equal government branches. To make matters worse, the court levied a fine of $100,000 a day until the Legislature devises its plan.

The money was ordered to be put into a special account to benefit basic education. Lacking the authority to call them back into a special session, the court tried to entice them with an offer to waive the fine if they came back and crafted a plan.

“It’s our opinion they’ve overstepped their bounds, appropriating money and telling us how to spend it,” said signatory Sen. Mike Padden, a Spokane Valley Republican who has switched hats from legislator to judge to legislator over the last 35 years.

Other lawmakers cautious

There’s no clear way for the Legislature to challenge the order and fine. They can ask for a rehearing and reconsideration, but the justices were pretty clear they’d had it with the Legislature’s inability to come up with a plan to finish a task first laid out in 2012. The lawmakers’ letter lists ways they think the court order violates the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Washington Constitution, but good luck getting the federal courts involved in a state fight of this nature.

The letter writers are not alone in being irked about the latest court order, but they did not get an immediate buy-in from the other caucuses. House Republican leadership was tied up Friday and hadn’t read the letter. But several of its members have called for the justices’ impeachment, including Rep. Matt Manweller, a political science professor at Central Washington University who described the letter on his Facebook page as a pushback against a ridiculous court order.

Senate Minority Leader Sharon Nelson suggested her colleagues across the aisle spend their energy on education issues, not legal battles. The House Democrats’ chief budget writer, Rep. Ross Hunter, described the order as politically and practically inconvenient, but not a constitutional crisis.

It’s not unusual for one branch of government to tell another what to do, Hunter said: The Legislature puts strings on appropriations to force the executive branch’s hand. Compared to other states where courts have shut down parts of government in disputes over budget issues, this is pretty measured so far, he said.

Gov. Jay Inslee — who has to herd the cats into some sort of agreement about developing a plan if there is to be a special session — said letter writers seemed more focused on “a legally dubious theory that attacks the court rather than on finding a productive solution to our education challenge.”

If legislators decide to mount a challenge, the justices are unlikely to play Emily Litella and issue the judicial equivalent of “Never Mind.” But no one can predict what the court will do if the Legislature won’t do what it ordered last week.

That’s not really a crisis. But it is a conundrum.

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