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 16, 2012 by Doug
The first week of special session is just about concluded with a smattering of political theater and a new Senate budget. This budget was again introduced by Senate republicans joined by 3 democrats. The education cuts have disappeared but there are a couple of pension issues that continue in this budget: reducing early retirement benefits for employees hired after June 30, 2012, and a one year delay in the $143 million unfunded liability payment for PERS/TRS 1.
There is a continued funding for 6442 but they also added $780,000 funding for “10 charter schools” (Governor Gregoire has threatened a veto if the charter school provision gets to her desk). We take some comfort from the fact that she didn’t threaten to veto 6442 if it makes it to her desk.
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 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 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 17, 2012 by Doug
Less demand for government services and slightly higher revenue than expected, combined to give legislators a reason to smile. Okay, maybe not a smile but certainly a look of relief. The look of, “maybe we have finally passed the worst part of the recession” was on most of the budget writers faces.
$330 million less in expenses and $45 million more in revenue ended up reducing the budget shortfall from $1.5 billion to $1.25 billion (assuming they leave about $500 – 600 million in reserves).
The largest cause of the reduced expenses was K 12 enrollment lower (by 10,000) than expected. According to the report, “there appear to be three major factors for this reduction:
• A larger than expected reduction in enrollment resulting from ALE policy changes made
by the 2011 legislature. It was expected that there would be a reduction and a step
adjustment was included in the June forecast. The actual reduction appears significantly
larger than expected.
• Fewer transfers from private to public school. The poor economy resulted in a decline in
private school enrollment starting in October 2008 and averaging 1,000 students per year
through 2010. In contrast, private enrollment increased in October 2011.
• Less net migration into Washington. A significant portion of the typical year to year
growth in Washington public school enrollment comes from a net gain in state population
from migration. Our estimates suggest that net migration reached a 10 year low in 2011.
Posted on January 25, 2012 by Doug
Political assembly, Gear Up, and then snow, ice, and power outages, have slowed down my reporting but I am now caught up. So off we go…
Charter school bills were heard last week in the Senate and House amidst the snow and ice; it was almost as if they wanted to have as few people as possible attend the hearings.
The House charter school bills are HB 2606 and HB 2428.
HB 2606 was requested by Governor Gregoire and suggests charter schools but doesn’t identify the “partnership” as charter schools. What it would do is pair up higher education institutions with the poorest performing public schools (there are 56 identified schools). The goal of the partnership would be for the higher education institutions to try out new ways to improve student and educator success. All this must be done though within available funds (so it is unlikely much will happen with this).
HB 2428 is the most ambitious which would allow up to 50 charter schools. They follow the normal pattern of charter schools: they would use student funding from the state, would be exempt from most state laws pertaining to public schools, State Board of Education will oversee them, new bargaining units (could not be added to current bargaining units), and other special rules.
The Senate charter school bill was SB 6202. Generally it follows the themes set forth in HB 2428 with the same number of schools, and other rules.
The hearings were, despite the weather, full of debate about the pro’s and con’s. If you are interested in the debate, here is the Senate Education committee debate, and the House Education committee debate.
Posted on January 11, 2012 by dougnelson
Well, I am one day late in posting that the session has started. I have been busy preparing for testimony on health care reform in K 12. They surprised us by scheduling hearings on the 2nd and 3rd day of legislative session. While the suddenness is disconcerting because I have to set aside everything else I am doing, it is a good sign that this issue is getting off and running. I like the fact that the House and Senate are putting this issue out there front and center at the outset of the session. This tells me that they want to have plenty of time to work through the myriad issues that need to be resolved if we are going to have comprehensive reform.
Regarding the outlook for the session for PSE, the Supreme Court decision on basic education funding could not have come at a better time for K 12. This decision will make it difficult for the legislature to make further cuts to basic education. However, this will make it more likely that they will have to go after steeper cuts in non-basic education funding (e.g., levy equalization).
The most obvious problem the legislature will have to resolve is to reduce state funding by $1.5 billion. They have already cut the low hanging fruit, now they will have to cut some branches off the tree. The remaining cuts will be painful and will unfortunately, affect our abilities to provide education to K 12 and Higher Education – whether the cuts hit us directly or indirectly. It is a sad time we will be experiencing soon…
These are the other issues we expect to encounter this session.
Higher Education
It will take everything the higher education community can muster to entirely avoid the cuts proposed by Governor Gregoire. Whereas she suggested 14-17% cuts, my guess (my hopes) is that we can whittle this down to the 5-7% range. With the sentiment expressed by so many legislators that higher ed has suffered enough, I think there is a better than even chance that we might achieve that goal.
K 12 Education
I will be blogging on our primary issue this session later today. That issue, health insurance reform, should come as no surprise to PSE leaders. Other issues are:
- Avoid cuts to levy equalization;
- Limit the impact on classified employees of legislation to implement a 4 day school week or charter schools.
I think it is important to describe what we see coming at us at the outset of the session so we can look back later and see how much happened that we did or didn’t anticipate.
Posted on December 14, 2011 by dougnelson
The second special session of 2011 is quickly coming to a close. Surprising to just about everyone, including the press who were reporting yesterday that the legislature would conclude possibly by Friday or Saturday, it looks to me like it will end today.
The agreed to cuts/changes/fund transfers, the most significant of which is the $50 million delay of school bus purchasing payments by 10 months, have not faced a serious challenge on either the House or Senate floor. Yes there were those who argued that not enough was done to cut, and those who argued not enough was done to raise revenue, however in the end, the sentiment at the outset that not much would get done, turned out to be accurate. A final note is that higher education escaped without any cuts!
I’ll update this once the final gavel goes down and the bills are sent to the Governor.
Update: Sine die at 3:45 pm. Now we get to enjoy the holiday break and recharge our batteries for the upcoming 2012 session which begins on January 9. Enjoy your holidays!!!
Posted on December 12, 2011 by dougnelson
It appears that the House and Senate have reached a general agreement on initial cuts/fund transfers/caseload changes so that they take care of $500 million of the $2 billion budget shortfall. There are no cuts to higher education but one change will affect the purchase of school buses: a 10 month delay on the state’s payments for new bus purchases (this delay saves the budget $49 million).
Otherwise not much to get too excited about. However, those who would like more details, here they are.
The House Ways and Means committee will be hearing the agreement today. You can expect there will be small changes to the agreement along the way as it makes it through the House and Senate and then to the Governor’s desk. The hope is that they will conclude their work no later than this coming Saturday, the 17th.
UPDATE: The public hearing consisted of approximately 5 individuals with very few critical comments. Chairman Hunter commented that he was surprised there was so little comment (he took that as a positive silent statement of support for the changes).
