Legislators Pack It In Legislature Passes Highways, School Safety Bills

Thu., May 20, 1999

From Staff

One day after hurling accusations across the Capitol rotunda, lawmakers passed a $4 billion highway budget, pumped another $7 million into school safety and concluded their business until January 2000.

In a day of tongue-biting and painful compromise, House lawmakers scurried until the last minute to try extending unemployment benefits to laid-off timber and aerospace workers, but were unable to reach a deal.

By 10 p.m., so many senators already had left town - counting on a Wednesday adjournment - that leaders worried there wouldn’t be enough votes to pass anything more anyway.

During the day, liberal senators, led by Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, tried with limited success to widen a narrow agenda to include three pet measures: allowing mothers to stay home with newborns for a year, rather than three months; a civil service overhaul; and a “Patient’s Bill of Rights” allowing consumers to sue health maintenance organizations for damages.

Two of the three measures passed the Senate, but Republicans blocked a move to forward the bills to the House for a vote on Wednesday. The “bill of rights” measure didn’t even make it out of the Senate.

Brown and a group of Senate Democrats had lobbied Senate leaders to do more than simply pass transportation, salmon and school safety, as leaders had promised. Leaders feared opening the session to more issues would lead to a cascade of measures that would prolong the session for weeks or more.

“But a group of us wanted to voice our own agenda, as Senate Democrats, not someone else’s,” Brown said.

Into the evening Wednesday, Democrats held a late news conference announcing they wouldn’t go home without successfully passing the unemployment benefit package, which was accompanied by an unemployment-insurance tax break of more than $500 million.

But by 10:30 p.m., lawmakers conceded they didn’t have the votes to pass the proposal.

On Monday, the Senate passed a benefits extension bill without the tax break, but House leaders, Gov. Gary Locke and representatives of business and labor sought a bill that also included tax relief.

The school safety measure pumps $4 million into start-up programs for alternative schools and another $3 million into grants that could be used to beef up school security.

Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, and House leaders negotiated a compromise that allowed the $4 billion transportation budget to get back on track. The measure passed the Senate 46-2 Wednesday evening and passed the House 96-0 later in the night.

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