Legislative Checklist

Here’s a summary of action taken by the Washington state Legislature in the just-completed session.

Building projects

Spokane’s Cheney Cowles Museum received nearly $19 million for expansion. The state created new financing programs for cities such as Spokane to build convention centers. The new laws are expected to help Spokane with an $85 million convention center expansion.

Washington State University received $36.3 million to build a Health Sciences building that is expected to be the centerpiece of Riverpoint Higher Education Park in Spokane. Throughout WSU’s system, the state will spend more than $137 million on new construction.

Lawmakers put roughly $10 million toward improving the Allied Health building for Spokane Community College, which had sought the money for years and was at risk of losing accreditation. Eastern Washington University received roughly $1 million for a child-care center, and $11 million to renovate Monroe Hall.

K-12 education

In addition to higher teacher salaries, lawmakers passed school accountability measures, reduced class sizes for fourth-graders, and will add up to 1,000 new teachers across the state. Lawmakers will work later this month to establish competency tests for teachers, but already passed bills to help failing schools improve learning.

Several measures to improve school safety passed, ranging from requiring a child who brings a gun to school to be detained and counseled for 72 hours, to giving districts more money to develop emergency plans. Gov. Gary Locke plans to ask for additional measures when lawmakers return to Olympia May 10.

Higher education

Colleges and universities are included in an across-the-board 6 percent salary increase for state employees over two years, but also were given a $10 million pool of money to help boost salaries to retain the best and brightest.

WSU got money to cover expanded enrollment in Spokane and Pullman. The school also received $1.5 million for research, some of which will be used for joint forestry and “precision agriculture” projects with the University of Washington. The remaining money will go toward research ranging from breast cancer studies to work with a new type of salmon that does not reproduce, and semiconductor studies.

WSU also received roughly $4.25 million to start its Safe Foods Initiative, a 20-person research team seeking to find safer, more profitable, more productive ways to grow food. But WSU failed in its effort to collect $2.1 million for a research and instructional health sciences consortium.

Eastern Washington University officials were pleased with the budget as a whole, which continued to fund the school for more students than it actually has. But EWU officials were disappointed they were unable to get the flexibility to reduce tuition to attract new students. School officials also had hoped to reach agreement on a means for military personnel stationed at bases such as Fairchild to pay in-state tuition without suffering a financial penalty.

Transportation

After 50 years of talk, the state will begin buying up land rights to start building a 10-mile north-south freeway to connect Interstate 90 with U.S. Highway 395 through Spokane - assuming lawmakers later this month agree on a final version of a $4 billion road and highway budget.

That budget also includes more than $210 million in projects in and around Spokane to widen and expand Interstate 90 and other highways. Meanwhile, the city alone should collect roughly $2 million from the state to spend on local road problems, while the county will receive slightly less.

Gambling

Almost all attempts to change statewide gambling policy failed. Lawmakers didn’t cut taxes for mini-casinos, were unable to provide more money for compulsive gambling awareness and treatment, and abandoned efforts to give cities and counties more control over placement of new casinos through land-use laws.

Nonprofit bingo halls did see their tax burden cut in half, but it’s a bill the governor may veto.

Late in the session, Locke asked the Washington State Gambling Commission to hold off approving new mini-casino licenses until January 2000 so state officials can review gambling policy and set a new course.

Health care

Lawmakers agreed to spend $4 million to access a federal program to provide health insurance to 10,000 kids at 250 percent of poverty level. But they failed to adopt a Patient’s Bill of Rights, which would have given consumers the right to sue managed-care firms, and did not force insurers to cover contraception.

Lawmakers later this month may take up the governor’s complex proposal to revive the flagging health insurance market for people not covered by employer plans. Citizens in 17 Eastern Washington counties can no longer purchase individual health insurance policies, and insurance companies complain they lost more than $100 million on such policies last year alone.

Prisons

A proposal to send recently released prisoners back to the county where they were convicted died, but lawmakers agreed to add more community corrections officers and give them more authority to monitor exconvicts, including power to require closer supervision in specific cases.

Lawmakers also agreed to give corrections officers more leeway to recommend counseling or treatment for released offenders. They reinstituted drug courts and put money toward revamping an aging computer system that has proved ineffective in tracking criminals after their release.

During the interim, some lawmakers have asked a state policy institute to study where ex-convicts end up, what impact they have on communities, and what additional options there are for relocation.

Cougar hunting

A move to roll back an initiative that banned cougar hunting with hounds went through several changes before eventually dying. Lawmakers sought to let state game officers allow hunting the cats with dogs in areas where cougar populations were considered too high.

Salmon

Several of the governor’s proposals to preserve dwindling salmon runs failed, including a mammoth rewrite of water policy to provide more water for fish. Money in a construction budget to rebuild salmon habitat also was stripped at the last minute.

Lawmakers are still squabbling over who should oversee roughly $200 million in salmon spending, but are hoping to rehash those issues beginning May 10. They also are still trying to put together a historic deal to preserve $2 billion worth of timber by prohibiting logging near salmon-sensitive streams.

Economic development

The Legislature put some $18 million toward a package designed to improve struggling rural economies. The bills include a sales tax hold-back for sparsely populated counties to use for infrastructure - such as roads, sewers and water - and a few targeted tax incentives to lure high-technology businesses to rural areas.

A transportation budget still in dispute includes extra money for cities of 2,500 or smaller to do costly roadwork, such as curbing.

Social services

Efforts to allow welfare mothers with infants to stay home with their children for up to a year died when House Republican leaders refused to consider it. But the state’s final operating budget does not include the $13 million Republicans figured they’d need for additional child care for mothers who go back to work.

Budget staffers said the Department of Social and Health Services likely will ask the Legislature next year to cover such costs.

Lawmakers also put $8 million toward migrant farmworker housing - more than ever before - and agreed to build roughly 150 beds to house homeless children, and put $16 million toward beefing up services for the developmentally disabled.