Niki Sullivan at TVW’s The Capitol Record has a nice running report on today’s House budget press conference.
The House’s $30-billion budget proposal cuts about $4 billion worth of programs. Legislators faced an estimated $9 billion shortfall. Cuts include:
- Health and human services $1.5 billion
- K-12 education $1 billion
- Higher education $683 million
- Natural resources $107 million
- Other government $135 million
- Pensions $432 million
Numbers aside, for me, today’s budget announcement provided a defining moment of this year’s session. It came after the press conference.
Adam Glickman, lobbyist and spokesperson for the service employees union, SEIU 775, whose membership includes home healthcare workers, was livid. “The House has followed the Senate’s lead,” he told me (although, judging from the volume of his voice, he was also speaking to the legislators who were still in the hearing room). “They are treating the lowest paid workers the worst. What kind of values are those.”
By Glickman’s account, 6000 home healthcare workers will lose their health insurance. And “they will be the only workers to take a direct pay cut.” Not only will they see the wage freeze that other publicly-funded employees will see, Glickman explained, “but they are having their hours cut.”
Another union, the Washington Education Association (the teachers union), was also hanging out after the press conference. And actually, they seemed to be in a good mood.
While they were wary of the cuts to education (although, the House budget is kinder to K-12 ed than the Senate’s), they’ve actually scored an ideological win this week as the budgets have come out.
“Yes, we were right,” WEA leader Mary Lindquist told me. “Now is not the time to be talking about that [the education reform bill.]
Indeed, all session the WEA has made the point that no reform bill should pass until education funding is in order. The last two days have driven that point home as the conversation has once again turned to class sizes and teacher layoffs—as reform has fallen aside.
And so, ironically, the WEA is probably the one union—as opposed to Glickman’s SEIU (not to mention the WSLC who got screwed on the their workers’ privacy bill)—who have something to smile about this session. (Indeed, Gov. Chris Gregoire came out strongly in favor of the WEA position late last week.)
This defines the session in a small way because it highlights how how Democrats risk botching it on two fronts. They’re pissing off their blue collar union base (like Glickman’s SEIU) by failing to fund social services and they’re not making it up the ideology side on things like education reform. (Another glaring example on the ideology side is on environmental policy where Democrats have disappointed Green activists on things like mass transit funding and the carbon cap bill)
Today’s different reactions from SEIU and the WEA—at the ground-zero moment of the 2009 session, the budget (finally)—made this larger story clearer to me.
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The WEA is delusional. So, a few thousand teachers loose their jobs and our kids suffer and they are happy because they tried to kill the bills that would ultimately solve the problem.
It is like we are walking down a path, lost. The WEA is saying we better not ask for directions because we do not have the time.
The system is broken and our kids are suffering. Right WEA, now is not the time to fix it. Better to just let the broken system continue. Great work team.
Sheesh.
The WEA fought for the status quo, and they got it. If they are happy with the cuts then clearly they are not interested in kids.
As Clay Davis would say, this is some shameful shit.
Frank you are right on. IF these bills had been passed two years ago, much of the cuts no facing k-12 would not be possible because of the expanded definition of basic education included in the bills. The WEA is fighting for something, but it is not the kids or their own members.
The bills they oppose guarantee funding and smaller class sizes. What they oppose is having any responsibility. Charter schools!
I hope their “ideological victory” keeps Mary Linquist warm at night as the 1 million school children in this state suffer because of her stances.
Nice victory. You should be SO proud.
No educational practice reform? No mentoring new teachers? No increased pay for new teachers? No increaed graduation requirements that will get kids into higher ed? Then not another nickel for K-12! Thw WEA is a plague on our state’s children and economic future.
Special interests, special interests: Take off your single issue policy hat, and come together and lead or get out of the way.
Single issue politics gets people to “play” and our legislature knows it! Is education broken? Or, is it a simply a matter of of not enough money when trying to educate 1,000,000 kids in today’s reality using a definition of basic ed that’s 30 years old and 30 year old funding formulas! Even that system isn’t fully funded. The real problem is our revenue base. Let’s all work together for tax reform and then hold the legislature accountable to their paramount duty! It is the most vulnerable portions of our society who are not being served by the budget cuts. We need to band our voices and efforts together to be the change we want to make.
Right on, Sher!!! Believe me…WEA is strongly lobbying against the cuts, too. The “smile” referred to is momentary.
Well, Frank, Issy, Greg & kt–a little out-of-touch. You have to be delusional if you think any of the so-called “reforms” will ever get funded…they aren’t in the bills and two-to three elections awway is when that is “supposed” to happen…right…just more stigmatizing and stingy actions and words from legislators, and a rather ill-informed public making comments on issues they have no knowledge about…Sher is correct–let’s fund the system we have (we never have even approached investing in our children in a serious manner). For all you nay-sayers I remind you that 90% of attendees in our colleges are from our nation’s public schools–the same colleges and universities that the elites from around the globe send their children to sit next to our public school grads to earn advanced degrees.
Doug,
You have a point. However, if the expanded definition of education was in place, 728 and 732 money COULD NOT BE CUT because of the expanded definition of education.
Our teachers perform remarkably well with the system they have to work in. We are at the bottom of the list nationally in terms of funding and graduation requirements, but our kids perform in the middle of the pack. So, additional investments would be well spent.
However, the current system that allows our State to only pay for 5 periods (instead of the national average of 6+) and piles unfunded mandates on our teachers must change. I am simply stunned that the WEA fights so hard for the status quo of band-aids and initiative based funding mechanisms that do not adequately pay the teachers or help our kids.
17% of Seattle graduates qualify for state colleges. Fact.
The problem with the system is not with the teachers, but with the way we fund our schools and what we expect for that money. If the expanded definition of basic ed was passed two years ago, the k-12 system would not be taking it in the shorts the way it is.
If you love the status quo, it is all yours.
Frank,
You could not be more true in saying that our teachers perform remarkably well with the system they have to work in. As I read your comments I was surprised at how such a well-informed citizen could draw such an erroneous and disdainful conclusion. You list all the ways in which our schools are inadequately funded and yet you conlude that it is the WEA’s fault for standing in the way of improving our schools while it defends the status quo.
I can’t speak for the WEA; neither can you. I can speak for my own experience in the classroom and in my local association. This is not the time for comprehensive education reform because the problem we are trying to fix isn’t one of teacher pay or certification or accountability, or how many math credits a kid has to have to graduate, or whether or not a teacher has a mentor. The problem we have to fix is funding – period.
The last time the state considered comprehensive education reform was at the start of my career in the early 90s. Since that time certification has changed twice, unfunded mandates have increased, the WASL and WAAS have grown to monstrous and expensive proportions, professional development days (which were proposed at 10 in 1993) have been cut to two and and without voter supported initiatives educators would have lagged even further behind in pay and class size would be even higher.
Please understand: education reform without funding reform has already been attempted and it is the system you are facing right now. Further education reform is irrelevant, even harmful, as it does not address the underlying issue of funding. No matter how good a proposed reform bill looks, without funding it is an illusion. It is dishonest to support education reform so that we can all pat ourselves on the back for fixing education when the real issue is fixing education funding, the tax revenue that is the basis of government programs.
Folks love to lay the blame for problems with education at the feet of the students, or the parents, or the teachers, or the unions. Enough. Focus on ample, equitable, sustainable funding. That is the status quo that needs to be challenged.
And the sales tax exemption on the sale of bull semen stays intact.
The full list of exemptions is here:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=82.08
SEIU: 35,000 WEA: 82,000 Total: 117,000
If each member was assessed $1,000 for the privilege of earning tax-payer money the $117-million would go a long way toward paying health care costs for needy children.
@11 nails it. SB6048 and HB2261 make promises about increased salaries, lower class size, etc. that can’t be kept this bienium, and maybe not even into the next. What teachers would get stuck with out of those bills is yet another poorly-planned change to the certification system, more bureaucracy at OSPI, and a salary cut when TRI pay was outlawed.
That’s the danger of these omnibus bills. It’s easy to say, “Oh my God! The WEA is against reform!”, but they’re right to not support a potential dollar in the hand when it comes with a definite knife in the back.
The WEA is delusional. So, a few thousand teachers loose their jobs and our kids suffer and they are happy because they tried to kill the bills that would ultimately solve the problem.
It is like we are walking down a path, lost. The WEA is saying we better not ask for directions because we do not have the time.
The system is broken and our kids are suffering. Right WEA, now is not the time to fix it. Better to just let the broken system continue. Great work team.
Sheesh.
The WEA fought for the status quo, and they got it. If they are happy with the cuts then clearly they are not interested in kids.