OLYMPIA — Senate Republicans and the conservative Democrats who helped them pass an alternate budget last month said they are no closer to agreement on a plan to fix the state's operating budget problems.

“The longer we stay here, the less sustainable th budget they put out becomes,” Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, said. The proposal released Wednesday morning by House Democrats “just moved us farther apart as far as the structure of the budget.”

Prospects that both chambers will pass a budget and accompanying reforms before the next Tuesday, when the special session is scheduled to end, seemed to grow dimmer with each passing hour.

Zarelli, the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, contended it was the GOP and the three “road kill” Democrats who have given up the most in negotiations over certain reforms.  They dropped a proposal to skip next year's payment to the state pension system and a proposal to close one of the pension plans. But they want to end early retirement provisions for state employees set up under two separate laws; House Democrats are proposing just ending the most recent law.

“We've moved significantly, but we're not going to fold our tent and go home,” Zarelli said. Democrats have supported the complete package of changes to early retirement provisions in the past, he added.

Sen. Jim Kastama of Puyallup, one of the three Democrats who voted for the budget crafted by Republicans, said a new proposal to pass a law requiring a balanced budget for two years and develop ways to balance it over four years doesn't go far enough toward the goal of structuring spending plans so legislators don't face massive cuts every year when they start a session.

The Legislature already passes a balanced budget over two years, even if that's not required by law, Kastama added. “If we didn't do that, we couldn't sell our bonds.”

Through the assembled reporters, the coalition of senators traded jabs with House Democrats and their earlier statements about who was responsible for the slow progress toward a budget deal in this latest special session.  Each group accused the other of refusing to make concessions, and painted themselves as the ones giving the most in closed door negotiations.

House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, had said negotiators hadn't even been able to negotiate the budget because of Senate Republicans insistence on reforming state government. “We've come significantly toward their position.”

Countered Zarelli: “I don't see it as a good faith effort. They want to take the last few days before Easter, and send an Easter egg our way.”

To complete its work by Tuesday, the House will have to pass a budget and the bills surrounding it sometime this week, and send them to the Senate where it must pass in the same version. House Democratic leaders said they don't know if they have the votes to pass some of the reforms they are proposing; if they do, it goes to the Senate where Democrats also hold a majority but don't have the votes to pass the current proposal.

Asked whether the state was looking at another special session — which would be the third since Thanksgiving to address the current budget problem — Zarelli said Republicans expected “to be flexible but not roll over” and weren't going to be rushed into a vote: “It's going to take whatever time it takes.”

OLYMPIA – “I’m not going to negotiate in the news media.”
Politicians at all levels of government love to utter that sentence – when it’s to their advantage.
But let’s get real. If they think it will help their cause, their legislation or their budget, they like nothing better than to negotiate in the media. If they get angry, frustrated, boxed-in or closed out, they negotiate in the media.
  

To read the rest of this post, or to comment, go inside the blog.

OLYMPIA — In an effort to break a budget logjam, Senate Republicans and their three Democratic allies unveiled a new  spending plan Thursday morning that would spend more on public schools and state colleges.

It also offers more money for child care for working families and has no new taxes. But it does skip a $140 million payment to state pension systems in exchange for other changes to pension plans that would save money in the long run. 

Sen. Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield, the top Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, called it a “compromise approach” to the differences between the budget passed in a parliamentary takeover two weeks ago in the Senate and a significantly different plan passed by House Democrats on the last day of the regular session.

Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, said it was a better plan than the one he joined with Republicans to pass. “It's a budget that can bring the special session to a close.”

Senate Democratic leaders, who only saw the proposal at the same time Republicans released it at a morning news conference, said it has “some very good movement,” because it restores money for public schools and higher education that Republicans proposed cutting two weeks ago.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, said she was still concerned that the proposal cuts money for the Disability Lifeline, but “I feel great about the moves that were made on the spending side.”

The public release of a new budget proposal, signaled movement over talks which have essentially been at a stalemate for two weeks. But potential roadblocks quickly surfaced.

Democrats said they still have concerns about skipping the $140 million pension payment, because the cost of that grows over time. Republicans acknowledge the long-term cost of that is about $400 million over 25 years, but they estimate the savings from ending early retirements for new state employees would be $2 billion over that period, and that money could be used to shore up the pension funds.

The Legislature has skipped or delayed pension payments in six times since 2001, in budgets written by Democrats and Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire had asked legislative leaders to come  up with a budget that doesn't skip the pension payment, which Republicans favor but Democrats oppose, and also doesn't delay a $330 million payment to schools by shifting it from the end of this biennium to the first day of the next. Democrats favor that approach but Republicans call it unsustainable budgeting.

The new budget proposal doesn't do that. It also calls for the state to spend $780,000 to set up 10 charter schools, while cutting $1.5 million Democrats proposed for “collaborative schools”.  Charter schools, which can be set up by a public school and parents to try new methods and avoid some state requirements, would need new legislation to be passed along with the budget. Collaborative schools, a plan to pair the Education Departments of the state's colleges with troubled schools, has already passed.

Sen. Rodney Tom, another of the three Democrats who voted with Republicans on their Senate budget, is a strong supporter of charter schools. The budget would pay for 10 next year, in “persistently failing schools.” But Gregoire and other Democrats regard charter schools as taking money from the existing schools; the governor proposed the collaborative school program as a way to bring innovation into classrooms without setting up charter schools.

OLYMPIA – One of the hallmarks of the closing days of a legislative session is that people say and do bizarre things.
Make that more bizarre than normal. The marbled halls and floors of the Capitol Building don’t protect against the weird; they just dress it up a bit.
But after the Legislature tied itself into a Gordian knot over the budget with a week to go, partisans on both sides seemed to go farther into the deep than normal. Not that I’m complaining.
As most people with any interest in state politics know, Senate Republicans pulled off parliamentary coup of historic proportions over the state’s operating budget. Some think it was roughly on par with the tactics the Spartans holding off the Persians at Thermopylae about 2500 years ago, it’s unclear yet if they will fare better in the end than King Leonidas and company…
  

Senate Democrats try to regroup after Republicans seized control of the budget debate with parliamentary maneuvers.

OLYMPIA — Senate Republicans, aided by three conservative Democrats, used parliamentary tactics to push their alternative budget to a vote Friday and embarass the majority of Democrats who up until that afternoon controlled the chamber.

They presented a budget that has no tax increases, some $773 million in cuts and avoids some of the accounting shifts that Democratic plans use to close a gap between the state's expected revenues and its planned expenses.

On a series of 25-24 votes, Republicans pulled a now obsolete budget proposed by the governor from the Ways and Means Committee where it has languished for months, then made a motion to substitute their alternative spending plan for the governor's.

The governor's budget was drafted before the latest economic forecasts, and has draconian cults that are no longer needed, Ways and Means Chairman Ed Murray, D-Seattle said. The Republican alternative hasn't even had a hearing.

“Transparency is being tossed out the window along with any hope for bipartisanship,” Murray said.

But Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, said  bipartisanship has been lacking since the session started in January. Unlike last year, when Senate Democrats and Republicans worked together on a budget, Republicans felt shut out of discussions over budget cuts and reforms. But with less than a week left in the session, Senate Democrats still didn't have the votes needed to pass their budget, he said.

“This is not about partisan politics. This is about trying to get things to work right,” Hewitt said.

Democrats objected at every turn, as bills were moved around by parliamentary rules. But they didn't have the votes to stop it as three of their own — Sens. Jim Kastama, Tim Sheldon and Rodney Tom — voted with Republicans. As a delaying tactic, the remaining Democrats invoked a rule that requires a bill to be read aloud in the chamber unless Senators waive that rule with a two-thirds majority.

Reader Ken Edmonds began reading the budget, more than 235 pages, in full, enunciating every digit, funding change and even website address. It's a rule that hasn't been successfully invoked in decades, longtime staffers said, and a process that one estimated could take at least five hours.

While Edmonds read on, Democrats gathered in the wings to draft amendments and Gov. Chris Gregoire met with House leaders, who have already approved a budget and were expecting to negotiate compromises in the coming days.

At about page 35, senators agreed to a pause while both sides ate dinner and Democrats began preparing amendments to the Republicans' amendment.

A clearly angry Gregoire emerged from the meeting, and with a voice cracking from laryngitis, blasted Senate Republicans for dropping an unseen budget never subjected to public hearings into the process with less than week remaining in the session. “This instittion is about transparency, it's about letting the voices of the people through the door,” she said.

Gregoire dismissed Republican complaints that they'd been shut out of the budgeting process. “I have reached out and worked with them. They never brought (their budget) to me.”

She said final negotiations on the state's $30 billion budget would be based on the House budget, which has had public hearings.

Hewitt shrugged when told of the governor's comments. “At least we broke the logjam,” he said.

Senators returned at 8 p.m., with a stack of amendments from Democrats that would restore funding to a wide range of programs. Amendments that would add funding for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and the Disability Lifeline to the state Energy Office, food assistance for legal immigrants all failed on votes of 24-25, or were shouted down on voice votes.

Senators clashed over whose plan was better for public schools when Democrats tried to restore state money for school-based medical services. The program involves medically fragile children the schools are required to serve, but by cutting the funding, Brown said “Olympia is saying 'Gee, sorry, you have to do it but we won't help.'”

Sen. Joe Zarelli, the ranking Republican on Ways and Means, said the GOP budget proposal spends $251 million more on public schools than the plan Senate Democrats released on Tuesday. But that's “slightly disingenuous,” Murray said, and only true if they count some $330 million that Democrats “save” through an accounting shift that moves a payment to schools from the last day of this biennium to the first day of the next.

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OLYMPIA – There’s more cooperation between the two political parties than previous years, but not much chance that some of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s major reforms will make pass this legislative session, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown said Friday.
Speaking with reporters at the end of the first week of the 105-day session, the Spokane Democrat said members of both parties are consulting and working together more than they have in years. Republican leaders made a similar statement on Tuesday.

“That’s real. That was true even before the tragedy in Arizona, that in difficult times like now… the public expects us not to focus on partisan differences,” she said. One move to give minority Republicans more say on the budget happened on the first day of the session, when the Senate changed rules to end a requirement that amendments to the general operating budget have a supermajority.

Neither party is willing to support Gregoire’s call to end state-sponsored Basic Health program or the Disability Lifeline that provides temporary payments to disabled residents. Gregoire told Senate Democrats Friday morning to come up with alternative cuts and “wished us well,” Brown said.

Asked how those programs are likely to survive, she replied: “It’s too soon to tell.”

While Democrats may agree to streamline and consolidate some natural resource agencies, they aren’t likely to support setting up a new system to govern and raise taxes for Puget Sound ferries, Brown said. And they’re skeptical of Gregoire’s plan to consolidate all state education programs from pre-school to graduate degrees into one massive Department of Education, although they don’t know the details.

“We haven’t got the bill yet. There is interest in the Senate in not having so many agencies involved in education,” she said. It’s not clear yet what major changes can be proposed, debated and passed in a session so focused on the budget, she added.

OLYMPIA — Senate Republicans released their list of committee assignments today, and Spokane's freshman Sen. Michael Baumgartner appears to be someone they're putting a lot of stock in.

Baumgartner will start his first day in the Legislature as ranking Republican on the Senate Economic Development, Trade and Innovation Committee. He also gets a spot on Higher Education and Workforce Development and Ways and Means (aka a Colleges and “How get and spend your money”)

Not bad for a freshly minted legislator. But there are some perks that come with knocking off an incumbent from the other party, as Baumgartner did in ousting Chris Marr.

Northeast Washington's Bob Morton is the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee and has a seat on Environment, Water and Energy.

Spokane Valley's Bob McCaslin, the Senate's most senior member who missed much of last session with health problems, is on Government Operations, Tribal Relations and Elections and Judiciary.

Southeast Washington's Mark Schoesler will serve as Republican floor leader and have seats on Ways and Means, Rules, and Agriculture and Rural Economic Development.

OLYMPIA — Senate Democrats apparently have a bill to do suspend Initiative 960 the way they want. Now they need Senate Republicans to go along if they have any chance of doing it before midnight.

It all has to do with the “bump” as explained by Jeff Reading of Senate Democratic staff:

The Senate is now heading back onto the floor to …attempt to move the 960 bill from second to third reading so that it may be voted on for final passage.

Procedurally, it takes a two-thirds vote of members present to “bump” a bill from second to third reading in the same day. The Republicans have indicated they won’t give the bump.