Local lawmakers expecting a fight

It could last a week. It could stretch on for a month.

Either way, a special session of the Legislature, possibly beginning as soon as next Monday, is bound to be contentious, Clark County lawmakers predicted Tuesday.

That’s because it will be about much more than balancing columns of numbers to pay for state government over the next two years.

Both the House budget and the Senate budget require passage of scores of self-standing bills to implement. Those bills deal with such hot-button issues as taking away retirees’ pension cost-of-living increases, reforming children’s health subsidies, eliminating cash grants for unemployed, disabled adults, and raiding a public works capital project fund to boost state operating revenue.

House Democrats will try to win approval of a bill to privatize state liquor distribution, which they’re counting on to generate an extra $300 million for the next biennium, and which the Senate and Gov. Chris Gregoire oppose.

Both chambers would have to agree to allow private card rooms to install video poker machines to help them compete with tribal casinos, another potential new source of revenue.

“There are a myriad of issues that have to be resolved,” said Mark Brown, who lobbies in Olympia on behalf of the cities of Vancouver, Battle Ground and Ridgefield. “It’s going to be like navigating a minefield. The politics are very, very difficult.

“A percentage of the real estate excise tax goes into the public works trust fund,” Brown said. “You can’t sweep those funds without passing a bill. The House and Senate bills both assume that retirees won’t get a COLA. You can’t do that without a piece of legislation.”

State Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, agreed that getting agreement on all the bills deemed “necessary to implement the budget” will be a challenge.

“There could be as many as 60” bills in the Senate alone, he said, and a comparable number in the House.

“To the extent we can get the House to understand it’s not a one-party road to a solution, the better off we’ll be,” he said. “If ever we are going to work together, this is the year.”

The regular session of the Legislature adjourns Sunday. If Gregoire calls the Legislature into special session, lawmakers will have up to 30 days to finish their work.

Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, says he expects it will take a month to work through all the issues necessary to get a budget deal.

“I think we’ll take the entire 30 days,” he said. Last year, he noted, it took the Democratic majority 30 days just to settle on a package of taxes to submit to voters, all of which were rejected in November. “I can’t imagine how we will get through all the contentious bills we have to get through, negotiate the differences, and come to agreement within a few days.”

Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, was slightly more optimistic.

“I think the special session is regrettable, but clearly at this point it’s necessary,” he said. “I think we could have made better use of our time earlier in the session, but to wrap things up now clearly will require a few more days. My hope is that the special session will be extremely targeted, focused wholly on the budget and things necessary to implement it, and that we not protract it any longer than absolutely necessary.”

The House and Senate budgets aren’t that far apart, Pridemore said. “There are a few sticking points that are passionately held on both sides, but the reality is, the decisions aren’t going to get any easier. Both sides need to come to a compromise and finish this thing.”

Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, is flatly opposed to a special session.

“It’s absolutely unnecessary,” he said. “The budget writers in the House and Senate need to get together, get this worked out and get us out of here on time. If we don’t have enough money for higher ed, K through 12 education, social services and corrections, then we don’t have money to keep legislators here longer.”

Most of the decisions on how to bridge a $5.1 billion deficit should have been made long ago, Orcutt said.

“Four-point-six billion dollars of the problem we’re facing, budget writers knew about clear back in November,” he said. “They should have had a primary draft already done and figured out how to balance out the additional $500 million in cuts. There is really no reason for it to take this long. “

Assuming a special session is necessary, there’s also some dispute over whether the entire Legislature should be called back to Olympia or whether the budget writers should work on their own to resolve differences before calling the special session.

Local legislators lean toward keeping everyone on task in Olympia.

“Everyone should be there,” Zarelli said, if only to put pressure on legislators to come to a compromise.

“There are two schools of thought,” Moeller said. “One is that you keep everybody here to keep the pressure on. The other is, you let people go home and get back to their lives,” and save the money a special session would cost — $20,000 a day in the Senate alone. Moeller favors the former.

Partisan face-offs loom, even later this week. Republicans have threatened to withhold their votes on approval of a bill to sell state bonds to pay for capital and transportation projects unless Democrats agree to an overhaul of the state workers’ compensation law. Bond measures require a 60 percent majority in each chamber.

Democrats have a counter-strategy, Moeller said: “We’ll combine the capital budgets and the bonds” in a single bill. Combining the two in one bill, he said, will force Republican House members who oppose the bond measure to vote against capital projects in their own districts.