House Spurns Spokane Projects But Some East Side Republicans Are Still Fighting For Funding

Some East Side Republicans aren’t toeing the line on the House capital budget, which provided almost no money for Spokane projects.

The budget includes more than $5 million to fix broken pipes at the Airway Heights prison complex.

But every other Spokane project was skunked in the spending plan passed by the House Tuesday night, including $1.2 million to expand Cheney Cowles Museum, $850,000 to buy more land for the Riverpoint Higher Education Park and $750,000 to study whether the Spokane Convention Center should be enlarged.

Rep. Duane Sommers, R-Spokane, voted against the budget, which passed on an entirely party line vote - except for him.

“It’s a protest vote,” said Sommers, who offered an amendment on the floor to provide $1.2 million for the museum.

It failed, as did an amendment to care for Native American art now stored in the museum’s basement.

Spokane GOP Sens. John Moyer and Jim West also have cast votes for the expansion, as have Spokane’s two Democrats. But they are up against a new policy adopted by the House of excluding new or local projects from the supplemental budget.

West said the museum should be funded: it’s not a new project, or of mere local importance. “To call this a Spokane project is like calling Washington State University a Pullman project. The museum is a state agency with statewide significance.”

This is the second time the museum has asked for money, not the first.

“They came back this year and resubmitted their project at the Legislature’s request,” West said. “They were led on.”

Sommers criticized what he called “a double standard … If this were a prison or higher education they’d get money. But when it’s a museum somehow it’s at some second level of importance.”

A conference committee begins meeting today to hammer out a final version of both budgets.

Backers of the Riverpoint land acquisition may bail out of the capital budget process altogether.

A plan may be approved instead to sell state revenue bonds to pay for acquisition of the property, West said.

The chances for funding any other Spokane projects remain scant, lawmakers said.

The impasse has spurred fresh resentment over the Mariners’ new $320 million stadium, which many of the same penny-pinching lawmakers voted for during a special session last October.

“To say no to people now is terribly unfair,” said Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane, who voted against the stadium.

Rep. Jean Silver, R-Spokane, who voted for it, said: “I wasn’t crazy about the baseball deal at all. From our point of view in Spokane, how often are we going to go to a baseball game?

“I still don’t like it. The excitement of everything, all the hype with the media. If the team wasn’t playing so well we probably never would have been in that position.”

“Quite frankly it was one of those where you are a little bit stuck in a corner.”

Silver voted for the capital budget. She also withdrew her own amendment to add money to the operating budget to care for the Native American art collection.

In the end, the amendment was instead offered, without success, by Rep. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.

“We were all watching the dollars very closely,” Silver said. “If we let everyone go in for what they wanted, our budget would be busted.”

, DataTimes