Legislature passes budget, goes home GOP, Democrats both vow to retake House, end gridlock 

Tacoma Tribune
The Legislature adjourned Thursday and lawmakers left town, pleased they finally passed a budget after 109 days and filled with a sense of resolve to break the 49-49 tie in the House.

"As soon as we finish here, we will be back full time organizing, recruiting candidates and developing a strategy that helps us take back the majority," said Rep. Val Ogden (D-Vancouver).

"I've been in the majority and the co-majority," said Rep. Richard DeBolt (R-Chehalis). "I don't want to see what it's like being in the minority."

The partisan tie was one of the factors that prolonged what was supposed to have been a routine 60-day session. But it took an additional session for the House to agree on a budget, and four days into a second special session before the House and Senate reached a compromise.

Thursday, the Legislature passed several bills before adjourning at 2:18 p.m. They included:

* A revised two-year, $20.85 billion operating budget that replaces some of the money local governments lost when voters abolished the state motor vehicle excise tax with Initiative 695. The budget also starts the process of putting an estimated $1.5 billion more into public school programs or construction over the next six years.

* A revised $3.28 billion transportation budget that cuts highway construction and ferry service but borrows enough money to replace one-third of the projects that had been canceled because of I-695.

* A change that lowers the state's mandatory emergency reserves to about $500 million, so the excess will flow into school construction.

* Authority for local transit agencies to raise the sales tax to 0.9 percent, with a public vote.

* A shift of money that takes interest earnings on the emergency reserves - about $35 million a year - and uses it on transportation projects. In addition, $20 million a year from the general fund would be spent on restoring ferry service.

Gov. Gary Locke thanked and commended lawmakers Wednesday after they ended their negotiations. And he said he could appreciate how difficult it had been for them because he used to be a House budget chairman several years ago.

Rep. Tom Huff (R-Gig Harbor), co-chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told Locke it was harder than he could imagine.

"You've never been in a 49-49 tie, baby," Huff said.

Notwithstanding their public comments about cooperation and compromise, both parties are eager to put an end to the shared power arrangement that voters imposed on them in the 1998 election.

"If you get your own House, you at least get to vote on your own bills," said Rep. Hans Dunshee (D-Snohomish), one of the dozens of committee "co-chairmen" spawned by the tie.

Many proposals never got out of committee because Democrats and Republicans adopted rules that said they both had to agree to have hearings or take votes - even at the committee level.

"I thought it would be sort of nice to have a tie," Dunshee said. "We'd end up being middle of the road on things. But procedurally, it was gridlock."

House members aren't the only ones who want to break the tie in the House.

"That's a disaster across the rotunda," said Senate Minority Leader James West (R-Spokane).

If Republicans had controlled the House and Senate, as they did in 1997 and 1998, the Legislature would have passed a property tax cut and a bill to create charter schools, he said.

Rep. Dave Mastin (R-Walla Walla) said Republican control of the House would have resulted in cities and counties getting more help from the state to offset their losses from I-695 and more funding for state highway projects and ferry service.

But House Democrats, dominated by Seattle-area lawmakers, proposed spending lower amounts in those areas and instead would have given more money to Sound Transit to help build a light-rail system in Puget Sound, Mastin said.

"Cities and counties are not getting more criminal justice money because we are putting more money into Sound Transit - and they weren't even hit by 695," he said.

From the opposite perspective, Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-Seattle), chairman of the Senate Democrats Campaign Committee, said the tie in the House kept Democrats from getting collective bargain for state workers and extending unemployment benefits for locked-out Kaiser aluminum plant workers.

And if Democrats had the majority in the House, there would have been a property tax cut for homeowners, Jacobsen said.

"Those are things that died in the House because of the tie," he said.

Generally, the biennial election in the House produces a turnover of between 15 and 25 members among the 98 representatives. Some choose not to seek re-election. Some run for other offices. Some are defeated.

This fall, every one of those races will be pivotal in deciding who controls the House for the next two years and, therefore, which gets to set the agenda.

Rep. Lynn Kessler (D-Hoquiam) and Barb Lisk (R-Zillah), who shared the titles of majority leader, know better than anyone how difficult it was for the House to operate in a tie.

Kessler and Lisk had the task of reviewing thousands of bills over the past two years and deciding which committees they should be assigned to.

That task called for daily compromises on dozens of issues, they said.

"Barb and I kept the tie tolerable," Kessler said.

Even so, both said they will be working hard over the next several months to break the tie and help their respective parties gain the majority in the House.

"Whoever wins, we know it will function better," Kessler said.

"... or not, depending on who wins the majority," Lisk added.