Budget, Drunken Drivers, Tax Cuts Focus Of Final Week

Washington lawmakers head into the final week of their election-year session today, focusing on the budget, tax cuts and a crackdown on drunken drivers.

Republican leaders said the Legislature will have no trouble making the Thursday adjournment deadline, thus avoiding an embarrassing overtime session by a majority party that has prided itself on efficiency.

“We’ve had a pretty darned good session,” an expansive House Speaker Clyde Ballard said during a floor session Saturday as lawmakers began the final push of resolving House-Senate differences on myriad bills.

Probably the most significant bill of the session, a $2.4 billion funding package for transportation, cleared the Legislature early Friday and is headed for the November ballot. The bill provides for up to $1.9 billon in bonds, a shift of vehicle license-tab money to the highway fund, and a $30-per-vehicle cut in the yearly license-tab excise tax.

Lawmakers also have already resolved two of the session’s toughest social issues: gay marriage and abortion.

Some Democrats joined with Republicans last month in overriding Gov. Gary Locke’s veto of a ban on same-sex marriages. And on Friday, both of the session’s abortion bills died. The House bottled up a parental notification requirement and the Senate effectively killed a bill to outlaw the late-term procedure that critics call “partial-birth” abortion.

But there is still plenty of work to be done in the last four days of session.

Top issues to watch:

Budget. Senate and House budget negotiators should have a compromise plan hammered out by Tuesday and final passage would come on the final day of the session, said Senate Ways and Means Chairman Jim West, R-Spokane.

Both houses have adopted budgets with identical bottom lines: $19.085 billion, the same level approved last spring. Both houses want to use $100 million in savings they’ve identified to enhance reading instruction, salmon restoration, crime-fighting, transportation and higher education.

But they differ on specifics and must find common ground. West foresees no problems.

A last-minute crisis the negotiators are dealing with is a request by the embattled Fisheries and Wildlife Department for $6.8 million.

Taxes. The main tax-cut bill, worth more than $250 million to motorists every two-year budget cycle, is contained in the transportation package that still needs voter approval. Assorted lesser taxes will be cut by a total of about $25 million. That is more than the Senate originally approved and less than the House package.

Tuesday will be “tax freedom day” in the Legislature, West said.

Drunken driving. Major portions of the package went to the governor’s desk on Saturday and lawmakers will continue working on the remainder this week.

Resources. Lawmakers are expected to approve bills dealing with local planning for management of water resources and measures dealing with restoration of the state’s endangered and threatened salmon runs. A vote is pending on legislation on fertilizer regulations.