Senate Proposes $18 Billion Budget Democratic Blueprint Is Miles Apart From House Gop Spending Plan

Senate Democrats proposed an $18 billion state budget Wednesday that’s miles apart from the budget passed by the House of Representatives last week.

The Senate budget would provide 5 percent pay raises for teachers, state employees and college professors and staff. The House had proposed a $100-a-month increase for most employees - more for state troopers, prison workers and community college faculty members - but would require a $32-a-month contribution toward medical coverage.The House budget provides $100 a month raises to some state employees, but not all.

Senate Democrats ditched the $32-a-month requirement, and they also excluded the House’s ban on publicly funded abortions.

Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Nita Rinehart, D-Seattle, said she would “never” agree to a budget proposal with the ban on abortion funding in it.

Dave Welch, state director of the Christian Coalition, said his members will lobby to keep the ban in the final version of the budget. “But we know we will have a tough go in the Senate.”

The Senate budget also is more generous to kindergarten through grade 12 and higher education programs than the House version.

Rinehart called the Senate proposal an “education budget” because it spends $457 million more for schools than the House budget would, including $27 million in additional financial aid for higher education and for 3,710 more enrollment slots.

Senate Democrats also dumped a so-called attendance incentive in the House budget that would cut $126 million from K-12 education, anticipating schools won’t be able to avoid cuts in funding tied to truancy.

Locally, the Senate budget is even tougher on some Spokane programs than the House proposal.

It contains no funding for local programs put together by school districts, hospitals, law enforcement and citizen activists to combat child abuse and neglect.

Local programs that would get no state money under each budget include the Deaconess Regional Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, family counseling services in Spokane School District 81 estimated to help 7,000 kids a year, a parent outreach program at the Martin Luther King Center and a home for unwed teenage mothers run by Volunteers of America.

The Senate budget goes even further: It also would cut $100,000 provided in the House budget for the Volunteers of America Crosswalk program in Spokane.

Spokane County Sheriff John Goldman said he is distressed the Senate budget would eliminate the approximately $180,000 state grant for the Deaconess Regional Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, which he said is valuable to law enforcement officers.

“This is an effective program with a lot of volunteer match. I know the state wants to take a new approach to human services, but we can’t just throw out these valuable programs.”

House Republican leaders derided the Democrats’ proposal. “It’s business as usual, you bet,” said Rep. Jean Silver, R-Spokane, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“This proves that the Democrats still haven’t gotten the message,” said House Majority Leader Dale Foreman, R-Wenatchee.

“The election in November was about change,” Foreman said. “What we have here is a budget that maintains the status quo.”

The Senate proposal would spend nearly $17.9 billion over the next two years, the maximum allowable under Initiative 601 spending limits.

“We will not agree to a budget that will do that kind of damage to the taxpayers of this state,” Foreman said.

The House budget would spend $600 million less, with most of the difference going to tax cuts for businesses.

Foreman also said House Republicans won’t budge on most of the budget issues.

He renewed an earlier promise to open conference committees, at which House and Senate leaders will hammer out a budget compromise. Foreman said the open committees would allow the public to put pressure on Senate leaders to back down.

“Eventually, the Democrats and their special interest allies will crumble,” Foreman predicted.

But Sen. Eugene Prince, R-Thornton, said he hopes the House leadership will at least be reasonable.

“Anybody who tells me they can’t compromise shouldn’t be here,” Prince said.

Prince said he likes the Senate’s higher education proposal better than the House Republicans’ plan.

The Senate proposal would hold tuition lower and devote more state money to colleges and universities than both the House and the governor have proposed.

It also would increase financial aid in step with tuition increases, while the House budget would not.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee is holding hearings on the budget this week and hopes to pass it Friday, Rinehart said.

Then the House and Senate will have to hammer out their differences in conference committee. Their negotiations are expected to stretch the Legislature into a special session lasting several weeks.