Posted on April 13, 2012 by Doug
One of the surprises of SB 5940 was the last minute appearance of a $5 million grant for school districts who do the best job meeting the standards of the legislation. The grants will be awarded to school districts in the 2015-16 school year who do the best job meeting the following criteria:
- providing employees a Health Savings Account (HSA) / high deductible insurance plan;
- making progress to provide insurance plans that have employee premium payments for single and family coverage that meets the 1:3 goal;
- offering employees an insurance plan that has single and family premium payments similar to what state employees pay for a plan offered by the Health Care Authority (HCA);
- how competitively the insurance plans are bid each year by the school district on behalf of it’s employees.
Each school district will be ranked by the Joint Legislative and Audit Review Committee (JLARC) on how well they meet the four criteria. JLARC will award the grants to school districts.
Posted on April 11, 2012 by Doug
After working through the night and getting a little rest, I am ready to take a preliminary look back at what we accomplished in the 2012 legislative session. Okay, it wasn’t just the session that began in January, as Ehren will point out. You really have to go back to the December 2011 special session for the beginning of the 2012 session. So all in all over the last 4 months we have had a short 60 day session and 2.1 special sessions (the .1 is for the special session that began at midnight today and ended at 7:30 am this morning).
It has been a grueling schedule for all who have actively participated in it. For our members who stuck with us through thick and thin, I want to thank you for your time, effort, and advocacy for not only yourself, but the many members who are too overwhelmed in their day to day lives to participate in our lobbying efforts.
No cuts to education
The supplemental budget that passed this morning, 3ESHB 2127, didn’t cut education to balance the budget. Legislator’s job to balance the $512 million budget shortfall received an expected boost with the discovery of a $238 million bookkeeping shift of funds that helped balance the budget. Specifically:
- There actually were some small increases of $13 million for a couple K 12 education programs ($6 million for new teacher evaluation systems).
- There was a $50 reduction in state employee insurance funding from $850 to $800 (a savings of $33 million) but this will have no impact on employee costs.
- The K 12 retiree payment starting September 1, 2012, will be cut by $0.84 cents to $65.17.
- I did fund a small cut ($1.3 million) in BECCA / truancy funding however this cut was at the court level, not the school district level.
Insurance Reform
I will cover our successful effort to reform K 12 insurance in a subsequent entry. What I can say here is that we sought transformational change in the $1.3 billion K 12 insurance industry so that the system was more responsive to the inequity in insurance affordability in the following three categories: singles and family coverage; classified and certificated; and, part-time and full-time funding. Though the final product is not perfect, we are confident that in the year’s ahead the efforts we made this year will achieve substantial improvement in all three of these areas. We have received numerous commitments from legislators that they look forward to working with PSE to improve on our efforts this year.
Four Day School Week
There were a variety of efforts early in the session to encourage more school districts to go to a 4 day school week. HB 2215, HB 2479, and SB 6050, were all given hearings but did not make it out of committee. We were very pleased that a major focus of concern, and a likely cause of these bills defeat, was the negative impact they would have on classified employees.
Posted on March 10, 2012 by Doug
Ever since the Senate Republican’s were joined by 3 democrats, the legislature has appeared to be confused what to do next. Certainly there were steps made to force through another budget on the last day of the session, but that Budget, produced by the House, was doomed to failure because there weren’t enough votes to pass it in the Senate.
The same confusion existed on SB 6442, the K 12 health insurance reform measure. The bill was placed on the calendar for a vote on the Senate floor three times. Each time it was put down by uncertainty whether the timing was right. The last attempt occurred yesterday when it showed up on the calendar in the morning and then we waited, waited, and waited for it to come up for a vote. Finally when it was brought up, the same 25 Senators who passed the Senate Budget last Friday, passed a motion to delay a vote until a later time.
When is that later time? The regular session was then ended and the special session begins on Monday. We will see if more action occurs during special session. In the meantime, we still encourage PSE members to contact their Senators and Representatives and let them know why we can’t wait another year for insurance reform. If we do, the only result will be more classified employees and their families without insurance.
Posted on March 3, 2012 by Doug
Last night’s Senate republican budget, SB 5967 was introduced. The higher education cuts are student related (tuition waivers reduced funding by $30 million and out of state tuition payments reduced $8 million). That means there weren’t operational cuts at all for CWU, WWU, or WSU. The same insurance funding reduction from $850 to $800 was in the Budget the same as the previous budgets (this $33 million reduction is taken out of reserves).
The K 12 cuts were in readiness to learn ($8.4 million) and reduction for national board certified teachers from $5,000 down to $2,500 ($17.3 million). They did not delay the $340 million payment to school districts from the end of June to the first of July, they did not cut levy equalization or the BECCA funding of $940,000 that was in the previous Senate budget.
Finally, they funded the start-up costs for the K 12 consolidation of insurance benefits.
Go here for more detail on the cuts and adds.
Posted on March 3, 2012 by Doug
The dust has not yet cleared on last nights, actually, they finished around 2:00 am this morning, political coup. The republican takeover of the Senate changes everyone’s predictions how or when this session will end. It is too early to tell for sure since the Senators are now meeting in their caucuses to figure out what the next steps will be (we only have 5 days left in the 60 day session). All indications are that we are headed into a special session.
Republicans joined with 3 democrats to reach the 25 votes necessary to do whatever they wanted to do last night. The remaining 24 democrats put up a good fight but were unable to change the direction the republicans were taking them. This hijacking will lead to a certain level of distrust that wasn’t there before and is likely to slow the process down as legislators check and double check commitments to legislation. PSE will be doing the same thing for 6442.
Posted on February 29, 2012 by Doug
Somehow, the Senate figured out how to balance the budget without making significant cuts to education. After suffering through several years of budget cuts to balance the budget, this Budget protected education (I think the Supreme Court is starting to have an effect). There aren’t any cuts to higher education(!), levy equalization, or any other major education program.
Most important, the Senate found $12.4 million to provide start up funds for the new School Employees Benefits Board as described in SSB 6442. We are very pleased that the Senate continues to provide legislative leadership on our most important issue of the 2012 legislative session: K 12 insurance reform.
Other details about the budget:
- BECCA program funding reduced $940,000 (no truancy petitions for students 17 or older).
- $340 million delay in school district funding – a one day delay from June 30 to July 1. This is an accounting trick that should have no impact on school district funding.
- $850 to $800 state allocation reduction for state employee insurance benefits – this saves $33 million by taking this reduction from the reserve account. This will have no impact on state employee insurance premium share.
For more details, go here.
Posted on February 24, 2012 by Doug
As promised in my previous entry, I have the names of the members who voted for the amendment. However, as it turns out 18 of the 19 votes cast supported moving it to the next step! 13 of them voted to move it out of committee with a “do pass” recommendation while 5 voted to move it out of committee without a recommendation. There was only one vote to not move it out of committee.
As a result, we had two levels of supporters in committee; strong supporters and weak supporters (I’ll take any level of support I can get).
Strong supporters: Senators Zarelli, Ranking Minority Member; Parlette, Ranking Minority Member Capital; Baumgartner, Hatfield, Hewitt, Holmquist Newbry, Honeyford, Kastama, Keiser, Padden, Pflug, Schoesler, and Tom.
Weak supporters: Senators Murray, Chair; Kilmer, Vice Chair, Capital Budget Chair; Brown, Conway, and Regala.
Please contact any or all of the Senators and thank them for their support for SSB 6442. Don’t forget to ask them to continue their support when the bill comes up for a vote on the floor.
Posted on February 23, 2012 by Doug
Classified employees won a major victory in the Senate Ways and Means Committee today by scoring a major upset on K 12 health insurance reform. While numerous opposition lobbyists for the insurance industry, brokers and unions stood by, we defeated their amendment to water down the reform bill. Then the committee overwhelmingly supported PSE by approving SB 6442 as amended by Senator Karen Keiser. By a vote of 13-6 (I am guessing on the vote but will have an exact vote count soon), the committee approved sending the bill to the Rules committee.
I will be posting the list of Senators who supported PSE on this vote as soon as I get the exact vote count. Once I do, we are requesting that as many PSE members as possible send an email to thank them for their support.
Congratulations to the PSE members who attended our Presidents’ Day lobbying effort and those members who have letting their legislators know that it is time to reform our insurance plans. Your time and effort, even though you weren’t certain what affect you were having, had a tremendous effect.
Stay tuned as we move on to the next battle in the Senate: the Rules Committee!
Posted on February 21, 2012 by Doug
The House budget proposal was presented earlier this morning. A hearing will be held this afternoon and I would expect it to be approved by the House by the end of the week and then sent on to the Senate (I expect the Senate to have their budget out early next week).
Remember, legislators have a roughly $1 billion hole in the budget they have to fill so it is difficult to see any of the following as positive. There is small consolation in saying “the cuts weren’t as big as we expected in some areas.”
Key points of the budget:
• Higher education – CWU had a 3% cut, WWU – 2.5% cut, WSU – 3% cut.
• State employee insurance funding reduced from $850 to $800 – this doesn’t cut employee benefits since the insurance plan had plenty in reserve to cover this reduction.
• K 12 apportionment for the month of June delayed 1 day to July 1 – temporarily saves $340 million
• Levy equalization – May and June payments delayed until July – temporarily saves $75 million
o August levy equalization rate will be reduced from 14% to 12% – this reduces future payments to all school districts equally
o January 1, 2014, maximum levy percentage will be reduced 4%
• BECCA / Truancy funding eliminated effective April 1, 2012 – saves $8.8 million
• Small high school (high schools with less than 300 students) funding reduced by 2 teachers (from 9 certificated to 7) – saves $11.5 million
• National board bonus for teachers reduced from $5,090 to $4,000 – saves $8.3 million
• There were a few new small revenue streams in the budget amounting to $51 million in additional revenue.
There is no way to say this is a good budget because it continues for the fourth successive year a budget heavily burdened with cuts with very little effort to develop new revenue sources.
Posted on February 21, 2012 by Doug
55 PSE members made the decision to forego their Presidents’ Day holiday and instead come to Olympia to advocate for health insurance reform. After a briefing with Ehren, Doug, and Rick, they delivered signed cards to legislators, and, more important, talked with them about how important it is to do something to fix the K 12 health insurance system.
After meeting with 77 legislators, the intelligence they brought back will be helpful to PSE’s continued lobbying efforts. Some legislators were solidly behind us, some were solidly against us, but more important, many legislators still haven’t made up their mind.
We need your help.
Contact your legislator and let them know that they should pass SB 6442 this year. Tell them, “waiting another year will not make the problem go away”. For additional information on what to say to your legislator, go to our health insurance reform website.
