OLYMPIA — A bill that sets up a framework to address the McCleary decision has been passed by the state Legislature and is headed to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk for a signature.
Senate Bill 6195 — the McCleary basic education funding plan — is the first bill of the session to pass out of both the House and the Senate.
The bill passed out of the House on Thursday on a 66-31 vote and now goes to the governor for his signature, according to The Capitol Times. The bill passed out of the Senate earlier last week.
State Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Sequim; Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim; and Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam — representing the 24th District, which covers Clallam and Jefferson counties and part of Grays Harbor County — said they supported the bill.
The bill requires next year’s Legislature to end the state’s overreliance on local school levies.
“That is when we will deal with the issue,” Tharinger said Friday. “What [the bill] does is answer the court’s question about whether we have a plan or not to” address the McCleary decision, he said.
“I think it shows that we do, so we are hopeful. The court did give us until 2018 to solve the problem, and so this lays out the plan on how we are going to get there.”
The McCleary decision is named for Stephanie McCleary, a Sequim native who is a Chimacum parent and school district human resources director. She was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that led to a state Supreme Court decision in 2012 directing the Legislature to fully fund basic public education.
While Hargrove says SB 6195 “is not terribly substantive,” he said the bill does lay out “a process for getting to the end goal, and that was actually what the contempt was about, was that the Legislature had not provided a plan on how they were going to get there, so hopefully this will work.”
The state Supreme Court has held the state in contempt over its failure to figure out the remaining issues about how the state can fully pay the costs of basic education, as the constitution requires, while ending its overreliance on local tax levies.
Hargrove is hopeful the bill demonstrates to the Supreme Court that there is “a process in place that would end up with a solution that would pass that would satisfy their concerns, and it will be favorably received to get us out of contempt,” Hargrove said.
Van De Wege said the measure sets some deadlines and makes sure legislators are going to be on the schedule mandated by the court.
“That is good for kids, that is good for education, that is good for the state. I am thrilled. It is a smart move,” Van De Wege said.
The bill also collects data on teacher compensation and how levy dollars are being spent, and creates a legislative task force to continue working on the issue before the 2017 legislative session.
“The whole levy balancing and equity issue is a big challenge,” Tharinger said. “I think this lays out a plan on how we get there.”
In other business, Hargrove, chair of the Capital Budget Committee, has been working to rework supplemental budgets after the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council on Wednesday dropped the revenue forecast for the current 2015-17 budget by $78 million.
“That changed things quite a bit,” Hargrove said. “It was a lot larger than people thought.”
As such, “we have been scrambling here the last three or four days with the budgets to try and figure out how we are going to do that, and it is going to be a lot tighter than we thought,” Hargrove said.
This is the first time in two years the council has decreased its estimate for a current biennium, according to The Capitol Times.
Economists also estimate the following 2017-2019 budget will fall $436 million short.
The state’s chief economist Steve Lerch said the lower projections are due to a decrease in global and national economic growth.
One solution might be to dip into the Stabilization Account — commonly referred to as the state’s “rainy day fund,” Hargrove said.
“There is a debate over how much to use the Budget Stabilization Account for,” he said.
The account was created to help the state get through emergencies and recessions.
The fund is expected to reach $700 million by June 2017, according to The Capitol Record.
It takes a three-fifths vote to use funds from the rainy day account.
Then the House would also have to approve it by a three-fifths vote.
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Reporter Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.