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House budget committee holds
work session on Republican budget bills focused on accountability,
integrity and sustainability
Editorial in The Olympian: 'Alexander's
proposal makes sense - and therefore will likely be rejected out-of-hand
by Democrat budget writers.'
The
House Ways and Means Committee held a work session on eight
Republican proposals aimed at restoring accountability, integrity and
sustainability to the legislative budgeting process.
"If we don't get the process right from the beginning; if we keep going
about business as usual, we're going to temporarily patch this problem
and then find ourselves right back in the same predicament down the
road," said
Rep. Gary Alexander, the ranking Republican on the
House Ways and Means Committee.
"We keep talking about making substantive changes to the budgeting
process, but we just keep teeing it up over and over again,"
Alexander, R-Olympia, said. "At some point, I'd like the
opportunity to swing away and really change the nature of how things get
done around here."
Alexander said the broad coalition of House Republican sponsors is
indicative of the good ideas being generated from his colleagues.
"This isn't just me coming up with ideas," Alexander
said. "We've got a host of members who have some great ideas for
true reform. I'm happy the majority party agreed to hold a work
session on our ideas, but a work session is far from actually holding a
public hearing where we can hear citizens' support for our proposals.
"In the end, I suppose a recent observation in an
editorial
by The Olympian will continue to ring true when it said:
'Alexander's proposal makes sense - and therefore will likely be
rejected out-of-hand by Democratic budget writers,'" Alexander
said.
House Republican budget proposals discussed during today's work session
included:
House Bill 1458, sponsored by
Rep. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor, would require a fiscal
note to be established before final passage of any bill before the
Washington State Legislature.
House Bill 1654, sponsored by Alexander, would
establish a period of public and legislative review for the state's
major appropriations bills. Dubbed "The Budget Sunshine Act," it
would require a five-day waiting period before either legislative body
could vote on the operating, capital or transportation budgets.
During the work session, Alexander said oftentimes he's
been forced to vote on a budget bill that was still literally "warm"
from being recently copied.
"I've voted on a budget bill, and then later when I've actually had a
chance to read it, found details that were not in any previous version
of the bill," Alexander said. "This place moves
at a very fast pace, but to sacrifice the integrity of my vote, and to
sacrifice the integrity of the contents of the budget for the sake of
expediency, is just plain wrong. It's not what the citizens of
this state expect from their elected officials."
House Bill 1655, also sponsored by Alexander, would
require the Legislature to adopt a balanced budget.
While the governor is statutorily obligated to propose a
balanced budget, there is currently no requirement for the Legislature
to adopt one. This could lead to the practice of borrowing or
issuing bonds in order to pay for daily, ongoing expenses.
House Bill 1657, sponsored by
Rep. Glenn Anderson, R-Fall City, would establish
that the paramount duty and first priority of the Legislature is to fund
education. The bill would require a separate education budget be
enacted before any other general spending plan could be adopted.
House Bill 1902, sponsored by
Rep. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, would simplify the
budget language for the public by eliminating all of the dedicated
accounts contained in the near general fund. These
accounts, such as the health services account, the water quality
account, and the education trust legacy account would simply be rolled
into the general fund.
House Bill 2228, also sponsored by Bailey, would
prohibit the governor or the Legislature from proposing an operating
budget deemed unsustainable in the ensuing biennium, or the following
biennium after that one.
"By now, we've all heard, and we all remember, the governor's infamous
quote when she signed last year's supplemental budget,"
Alexander said. "She signed a budget that she said she
knew was unsustainable. That makes no sense to me and has added to
the sizable budget deficit we're facing now. If this legislation
was in place last year, she would not have been able to sign a budget
that she very well knew spent too much."
House Joint Resolution 4207, sponsored by
Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, would establish a state spending
limit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010. The fiscal limit
mirrors the original language found in the voter-approved Initiative 601
by limiting expenditures to an increase in the state's population and
inflation growth over the previous three years.
"We know the voters want this," Alexander said.
"They approved the concept with I-601 and I continue to get comments
today from constituents who think the state still has a meaningful
spending limit. The fact that we don't leaves them dumbfounded.
All they know is they voted for one, and now one doesn't exist.
It's eroding the confidence and the trust our citizens have in us as
elected officials.
House Joint Resolution 4209, also sponsored by Bailey,
would require exceptional state revenue to be deposited into the state's
"rainy day fund" during good economic times.
"It's quite obvious that the Legislature overspent during the good times
we had over the past few years," Alexander said.
"If the Legislature was required to save some of that money instead of
going on the free-for-all spending spree that it did, a lot of heartache
and broken promises could have been avoided."
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For more information, contact:
Brendon Wold, Senior
Information Officer: (360) 786-7698
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