PHOENIX – The first bill Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed this session may be a big step for the state toward complying with a court order that has been hanging over its finances for years.
The bill Inslee signed into law Feb. 29 creates the Education Funding Task Force, a body composed of eight legislators and one nonvoting facilitator from the governor's office. The proposal was the work of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who convened in 2015 to outline the next steps for education funding.
The group decided that in order to determine the full extent of the state's fiscal obligation, more data was required that separated the state's support of teacher pay from local school districts' funds.
The legislation is a response to the Washington Supreme Court's decision in the 2012 McCleary v. State of Washington case, which is driving budget and public finance policy decisions in the state capital of Olympia. The court found that the state was not meeting a constitutional obligation to fully fund basic education and mandated $4.6 billion of new K-12 funding by 2018. The most recently enacted budget provided $2.7 billion of that.
"The Legislature has continually made progress on fully funding education, and this bill is the next necessary step in that process," said Inslee, a Democrat. "In the past three years, we've worked on a bipartisan basis to make historic new investments in basic education, including all-day kindergarten across the state, smaller class sizes in grades K through 3, and full funding for student transportation and our schools' costs for supplies and operations. In addition to those big steps, the Supreme Court has wanted a plan for the next steps. This will recommit that the Legislature is ready in 2017 to live up to these commitments to fulfill our constitutional obligations to fund education."
The law commits the legislature to eliminate the dependence on local taxes for the state's program of basic education by the end of the 2017 legislative session, and requires that the basic education program be clarified and ways identified to ensure that local funds will be used only to provide enrichment beyond basic education. It directs the task force to make various recommendations about compensation and recruitment of educators, as well as to recommend sources of state revenue to support Washington's education program.
The bill's prime sponsors were Sens. Ann Rivers, a Republican, and Christine Rolfes, a Democrat. Sponsors of the companion bill in the House are Reps. Kristine Lytton, a Democrat, and Chad Magendanz, a Republican.
"Education is a priority for both sides of the aisle in Olympia," Magendanz said in a statement issued through the Washington House Republicans. "This bill is a necessary step forward in identifying those basic education costs the state must pay. We need to keep up our momentum towards completing reforms for staff compensation before the 2018 deadline set by the court."
The legislature has to come up with the nuts and bolts of how it achieves the commitments contained in the new bill and meets the court's mandate.
The court put in place a fine of $100,000 per day effective Aug. 13, 2015 as a penalty for the state's failure to fund schools at the levels the court had mandated, a fine Moody's Investors Service said was insignificant to Washington and a positive for school credits in the state by creating public and legal pressure to ramp up spending.
"The next step before us is arguably the most complex, and I am confident the Legislature is up to the task," Inslee said. "This bill keeps legislators moving forward and provides information needed to help complete the task. "
Lobbyists have said they do not expect significant financial policy action during this session, because the budget under consideration is only a supplemental budget for the state's two-year spending plan.
Lawmakers will have more opportunities during the next session, when Washington will have to pass another full biennial budget. Magendanz is the co-chair of the committee responsible for responding to the Supreme Court's ruling. The committee will submit the state's post-budget report and brief to the court 30 days after Inslee signs the supplemental budget. The next biennium starts July 1, 2017.
March 10 is the last day allowed for the regular legislative session under the state constitution. There are considerable differences between Senate and House budget spending proposals that lawmakers need to bridge before then.
Republicans control the Senate by a slim margin, while Democrats hold a slight majority in the House.
Both sides have proposed sweeping the remaining $10 million in revenue from the Public Works Trust Fund as previously decided in the 2015-17 operating budget. The Association of Washington Cities has said this is a major concern for municipalities.
The PWTF is a state-capitalized infrastructure bank in existence since the mid-1980s that has traditionally offered market access at low interest rates to small municipalities, but essentially stopped lending in recent years as state lawmakers have taken money from it.
