As is likely the case in every Washington city, passing the $4 billion state capital budget sits atop the list of current legislative priorities for Vancouver. The city was poised to receive $14.8 million for public works projects, and $300,000 to upgrade the Clark County Historical Museum but the Legislature failed to pass the budget.
Despite that hurdle, Mark Brown, a state governmental affairs liaison for the city, told city councilors Monday night in a legislative priorities workshop that the city “had a really good (2017) session.”
Brown and city officials now have their sights set on priorities for the short 60-day session in 2018.
Officials have renewed hope with a new Democratic Senate majority that even though the session is short, legislators will unite on all major policy and operational issues when the session kicks off January 8.
“It’s imperative to (legislators) that they get out on time but they also have a lot of pent up demand,” said Brian Enslow, another state governmental affairs liaison at the workshop. “There’s a lot of things coming together that will make this a very difficult session.”
It’s also an election year.
“That matters,” Brown said. “It’s hyper-partisan there. What you’ll see in an election year is hyper-partisan on steroids.”
Without an approved capital budget, Brown said departments are facing layoffs. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, which Brown chairs, just laid off 16 staffers.
“And there’s a larger number coming ahead of us if we don’t get a capital budget,” he said. “There’s the human toll that this is exacting.”
Affordable housing and homelessness ranked No. 2 on the list of city priorities.
“The long and short of it is at some point in the session something is going to coalesce,” Enslow said. “It’s a problem deep-seated in affordability.”
He said it’s a problem that can’t be fixed in 60 days, but they hope to at least start a real conversation about funding and solutions.
The city also supports a change to the 1 percent property tax cap to allow property tax increases that reflect inflation.
“Quite frankly, our best case was last year,” Enslow said. “We did not get to where we wanted to be.”
But the Association of Washington Cities is still pushing the issue, so the city of Vancouver will continue to support the proposal.
Another issue on everyone’s minds is out-of-state license plates. Vancouver recently launched a program to track city residents keeping out-of-state plates and avoiding local fees in the process. The city loses an estimated $300,000 annually just in tab license fees. Sales tax leakage from drivers using Oregon licenses to avoid paying taxes at the register could be costing the city an additional $4 million a year.
As such, Vancouver is asking the Legislature to provide additional funding to expand the Washington State Patrol’s efforts to rein in violations.
“We think there’s an opportunity at the very least to have a conversation about process,” Enslow said.
The city also supports the Clark County Transportation Alliance’s 2018 policy statement which advocates for the replacement of the Inerstate 5 Bridge and an effort to allow city facilities to complete for Department of Energy water quality grants.
Among other priorities, the city continues to pursue an effort to increase regulation of massage and reflexology businesses.
“We’ve been working on it for a number of years,” Brown said. “We’ve (now) got a piece of legislation we’re going to shop around.”
The city wants to require licenses and permits for massage therapists and reflexologists to include a photo of the license-holder to prevent illegal operations. Brown said the concept faces pushback because of the potential cost to business owners and the sheer amount of work involved to oversee the project.
“There are lots of problems with this but we’re not giving up,” he said.
Brown added that these priorities are flexible.
“We realize (these priorities) are not concrete,” he said. “We want (them) to be a host of Vancouver specific things and things that benefit all cities. We’ll use this to set the stage for 2019.”
