The big four
Education
Gov. Chris Gregoire is backing a slate of changes: phasing in all-day kindergarten, expanding prekindergarten learning programs, adding thousands more college students, increasing teacher pay and shrinking class sizes.
Where things stand: All the proposed budgets would spend heavily on education, from prekindergarten programs through college. It’s not enough for schools, the Washington Education Association maintains, citing a WEA-sponsored study that said the state should boost education spending by 45 percent. But the broader fight over more school funding – and how to come up with it – will likely have to wait at least until next year’s Legislature. (A state task force report on an overhaul of school funding, however, isn’t due until the end of 2008.)
The House last week passed a bill aimed at improving math and science scores. It calls for state officials to develop three math and science curricula that could be used statewide. Local school districts would be encouraged, but not required, to use the new curricula, designed to provide consistency for mobile students and teachers.
Health care
Gregoire already has signed into law one of her top priorities: adding 38,000 children to state-paid health coverage. She also has proposed spending $26 million over the next two years to increase childhood vaccinations and a broad array of other reforms designed to make health care more affordable for more people.
Where things stand: In a victory for mental health patients and advocates, the governor Friday signed into law House Bill 1460, requiring more insurance policies to provide the same coverage for mental health care as they do for other medical care. Proponents say the change will apply to more than half a million state residents.
Same-sex marriage
Proponents want it, or at least domestic partnerships that would include many of the legal rights of married people. Critics are countering with a call to write the state law banning gay marriage into the state constitution – an unlikely move that would require approval from a legislative supermajority as well as voters statewide.
Where things stand: The Senate has passed a bill to set up a state domestic partnership registry that would provide rights such as the right for partners to visit each other in hospitals, inheritance rights if there is no will, and the right to make medical decisions if a partner is incapacitated. Gay and lesbian couples, as well as heterosexual couples with at least one partner over 62 years old, would be eligible to sign up. The bill has not yet passed the House but is expected to. Social conservatives have said they can’t muster enough lawmaker votes to stop the bill.
Environment
Gregoire has proposed spending $200 million toward the $9 billion problem of cleaning up Puget Sound, among other proposals.
Where things stand: Numerous local habitat and outdoor recreation projects are tucked into the budget proposals floating around Olympia. Among them: $530,000 for Spokane’s whitewater park, $306,000 to buy parkland in Greenaces, $250,000 for a fishing dock at Newman Lake, $1.4 million to buy land on Antoine Peak, and $250,000 for a birding train at Audubon Lake at Reardan.