House Democrats unveiled a striking amendment to ESB 5967, the Senate's supplemental operating budget, early this morning. As previously mentioned, documents are available on the LEAP web site.
Similar to the Senate Democrats' proposal, the striking amendment would make no cuts to K-12 or higher education. It relies on an apportionment shift of $330 million, from June 30 to July 1, 2013, but does not change the LEA payment schedule. It also does not propose a change to the levy lid or decrease the LEA percentage, as was proposed in the original House Democratic proposal.
House Republicans have countered with their own amendment, available on leg.wa.gov under ESB 5967, which would remove the apportionment shift and make about $330 million in cuts. In addition to making some reductions in K-12, the House Republican proposal would make changes to the social service safety net, eliminating the Disability Lifeline, for example.
According to sources, ideas included in the House Republican striker have been floated with the 27 Senators who passed a budget off the Senate floor last week, and if the amendment was adopted to the House Democrat's floor striker, then everyone would go home tonight.
For their own part, House Democrats are trying to stay positive and plan to send the budget bill back to the Senate today. This would leave the Senate with three options:
- concur and be done, with a few housekeeping bills;
- do not concur, and ask the House to recede from their amendment, virtually assuring a special session; or
- do not concur and ask for a conference committee, again sending the budget issue into conference committee and a special session.
The Governor is leaning on lawmakers to get their work done before 11:59 p.m., but has said that she will call them back in if they don't reach agreement. "Across the board cuts are not acceptable," the Governor told reporters yesterday. But she also said she wanted to keep the pressure on so they continued to talk with each other.
More to come.
Updates on the Legislature and state government from the Washington State School Directors' Association.
