Washington’s special legislative session got a quick and quiet liftoff Tuesday morning, with none of the drama, speeches and press conferences that usually mark the opening day of a session. In the House, gavels fell at 9 a.m. with less than a dozen members on the floor. They soon recessed until Friday, in keeping with their plan to keep doing “rolling recesses” of three days at a time until agreements are negotiated on the budget and other key pieces of …
Gov. Chris Gregoire has called Washington lawmakers back into special session, starting next Tuesday morning, urging them to show bipartisan cooperation as they write a state budget that bridges a $5 billion spending gap. The regular 15-week session wound to a close Friday and lawmakers still have at least two more weeks of work to do on the operating and construction budgets and related bills, House and Senate leaders said at a joint news conference with the governor. The Senate will…
Majority House Democrats have unveiled a $32.4 billion state budget that incorporates $3.2 billion in assorted cuts, a 3 percent salary reduction and higher medical contributions for public employees, pension reforms, and more. The no-new-taxes budget for the next two years was the first draft to surface in the Legislature since a new revenue forecast knocked another $800 million hole in the budget last month, bringing the total gap to over $5 billion. Tax collections have lagged as the state and…
Washington’s glacial economic recovery is still bleeding red ink. The state Revenue Forecast Council has just cut more than $778 million from the estimate of expected tax revenue, driving the state’s projected deficit to about $5.1 billion. That compares with the current $30 billion two-year state budget. Lawmakers have been cutting spending for the past several years and recently adopted cuts for the current fiscal year. Budget Director Marty Brown said there is still a gap of about $200 million…
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has signed the Legislature’s $360 million plan for emergency budget cuts to help the state weather the next four months. She vetoed the plan for a 3 percent pay cut for non-union state employees and a $1 million reduction in executive branch communications staff. The compromise budget proposal sped through both houses on Friday and the bill was rushed to the waited governor for action. She hailed the “collaborative and bipartisan” approach to dealing with the…
Bleak times: Gov. Chris Gregoire and a bipartisan panel of legislative leaders say the 105-day session that convenes next Monday will inevitably feature massive state budget spending cuts as Olympia deals with an unprecedented $4.6 billion budget gap. The Democratic governor, who recently unveiled a no-new-taxes budget, said the voters sent a clear and unmistakable signal with their tightfisted votes in November that they want an all-cuts budget. That tracked with what Republican leaders of the House and Senate told…
Secretary of State Sam Reed, a longtime advocate for Washington’s Presidential Primary, is joining Gov. Chris Gregoire in asking the Legislature to suspend the primary in 2012. The move would save $10 million. The regular Top 2 Primary would still be held in August for governor, U.S. Senate, and other statewide and local races. But the state would rely on the old precinct caucus-convention system, which Iowa and a handful of other states still use, for allocating national nominating convention…
Gov. Chris Gregoire has called Washington lawmakers into an emergency special session at 9 a.m. Saturday to deal with the state’s billion-dollar budget gap. This is apparently the first “lame duck” session the Legislature has ever had. Leaders said they have agreement on cutting $784 million, including about $200 million of across-the-board cuts previously ordered by the governor and about $200 million in federal aid-to-education. The session is permitted to last 30 days, but leaders said they’re planning on a…
The Washington Senate has approved a “furlough” bill that would require state agencies to cut employee costs by over $69 million through temporary layoffs and other actions over the coming months. The move would affect over 110,000 state government and higher education employees. The Senate vote was 27 to 17, with only Democrats in favor, despite the vehement opposition of the labor unions. House Speaker Frank Chopp spoke favorably of a furlough plan this week. The plan that passed the…