During the legislative session COPE makes available weekly email summaries of the goings on in Olympia. If you would like to receive these summaries, please email jric@comcast.net and put COPE in the subject line.
Rick Sepolen, COPE Chair
61st Legislative Session – Week 15
This is the last report of the 61st Legislative Session! Yes, it appears that the Washington State Legislature will manage to take care of all the necessary business by Sunday the 26th, allowing the session to end on time.
Details of the final budget are now revealed. As I finalize this report, the House is debating that budget. They will finish the debate and send ESHB1244 to Senate Ways and Means for a hearing tomorrow morning. On Saturday or Sunday, the Senate will also debate and pass the budget bill. A 14-page summary of the 515 page budget bill can be found HYPERLINK "http://leap.leg.wa.gov/leap/budget/detail/2009/ho0911highlights_0424.pdf" here. Scroll down to find spending details on specific areas of interest starting on page 5.
This is a painful budget for education advocates. It includes potential tuition increases at state 4-year colleges of up to 14% per year; it rolls back teacher pay increases and reduced class sizes approved by voters; and imposes an average cut of 2.6% to school district budgets.
In spite of some House Democratic support for the .3¢ sales tax increase early in the week, there were not enough votes in the end to pass it out of the House. This was extremely disappointing to health care advocates for the low income in particular who had hoped to buy back Basic Health Plan slots, stave off job cuts of our caregivers and ameliorate some of the cuts to public health.
Bills of Interest
ESB5433, which passed the House with an amendment which would have provided the option for local transit areas to take tax increases for transit services to the ballot, will now go to conference committee, as the Senate refused to concur to the House amendments. Thus, the fate of the positive transit amendment is thus still up in the air.
SB6157, which would add back in any temporary salary cuts taken to reduce costs when calculating final salaries of retiring public employee, passed the Senate on Monday and is awaiting action in the House.
SB6068, treating a deferred prosecution as a conviction for CDL purposes, was signed into law by the Governor on Wednesday.
On Monday the Senate concurred to House amendments to ESB5540, allowing local jurisdictions to establish high capacity transportation corridors. The bill was signed by the Senate President and House Speaker on Tuesday and delivered to the Governor on Wednesday, where it awaits her signature.
Over the weekend, the Senate concurred to House amendments to ESSB5513, creating the crime of unlawful transit conduct. The bill was signed by the Senate President on Monday and by the House Speaker on Tuesday. It was delivered to the Governor for her signature on Wednesday.
Over the weekend, the Senate concurred to House amendments to ESSB5180, allowing buses to stop at unmarked stops along the highway. The bill was signed by the Senate President on Monday and by the House Speaker on Tuesday. It was delivered to the Governor for her signature on Wednesday.
ESSB5768, replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a deep-bore tunnel, passed the House with amendments on Wednesday. The amendments include a provision required by one-time tunnel opponent House Speaker Frank Chopp which would require that cost overruns be paid for by Seattle rather than the state. Now the Senate must concur to the amendments, ask the House to recede, or a conference committee must be convened to iron out the differences. However, it is widely thought that, one way or another, a deep-bore tunnel will end up being the agreed-upon solution by the end of the session. The Senate did concur with the House amendments late this afternoon and the bill will now go to the Governor for her signature.
On Monday the House concurred to Senate amendments to ESHB2072, coordinating special-needs transportation. The bill was signed by the House Speaker on Tuesday and by the Senate President on Wednesday. Yesterday, it was delivered to the Governor and awaits her signature to be signed in to law.
Employee Free Choice Act
Protect the Rights of Employees to Freely Choose Union Representation
ATU Supports:
Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the rights of employees to freely choose union representation.
More working people than ever - some 57 million - say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey from Peter D. Hart Research Associates. But employers routinely harass, intimidate and coerce workers who try to exercise their right to form a union at work.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would strengthen protections for workers' freedom to choose by: (1) providing for majority verification (commonly known as card-check) as a means by which workers can freely express their choice whether or not to form a union, limiting interference from the employer; (2) creating meaningful penalties, including treble back-pay awards and civil fines of up to $20,000, for employer violations of employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA); and (3) providing for first-contract mediation and arbitration supervised by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS).
Please visit the following links for additional information on the Employee Free Choice Act.
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/
For the text of the EFCA visit:
http://atu.bluestatedigital.com/content/pages/efca
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