OLYMPIA — How many votes make a majority? And how long does it take to make one?
In the political workshop that’s the state Senate, the answer has proven elusive as senators failed to hammer together a biennial budget.
That left Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, feeling, well, sawed off.
Hargrove had assembled 29 votes, including six Republicans — enough to ratify collective bargaining agreements state workers had negotiated last summer as their first general wage boost since 2008.
But in the meantime, the Republican-controlled Senate adopted a rule Thursday that requires a supermajority — 30 votes, not the former 25 — to amend the budget.
Even with four votes to spare for a simple majority, Hargrove’s bid failed against the GOP’s proposal for lesser pay raises for state employees.
The usually imperturbable senator fired off a rare news release Friday morning in which he wrote: “This is the longest state employees have gone without a wage increase since at least 1960.
“Many of our state employees have decided to take on difficult jobs — in prisons and mental health facilities — and this is the way we repay them?”
Since 2007, the number of general government employees has decreased by 7 percent while the state’s population has increased by 8 percent, he said.
“They are working harder and doing more with less,” Hargrove wrote. “They have earned our respect and should get our support.”
The senator — who serves the 24th District along with state Reps. Steve Tharinger and Kevin Van De Wege, both Deocrats from Sequim — was still nettled Friday afternoon.
Hargrove decried what he called a partisan tactic, and he said the six GOP senators who’d had backed his amendment probably did so just for show, knowing it was certain to fail.
“This just frosted me,” he said.
“They were championing bipartisanship two years ago. They were all in favor of it.
“Then once they get the majority they say, ‘Oh well, we changed our mind. We can ram things through without a full vote on the floor.’”
The tactic cost the Republicans some sleep, at least.
Democrats retaliated by refusing to bypass a procedural rule that requires additional time to vote on a bill.
They then launched most of the 70-plus amendments that kept the chamber in session into the early morning hours.
Hargrove said he didn’t hit the sack until 6 a.m. Friday.
That meant the Senate won’t pass its $38 billion budget until today at the earliest.
Then the spending plan must go to the state House of Representatives, where Democrats hold the majority and already have passed their own $39 billion biennial budget on a 51-47 party-line vote.
The House outlay includes funds to renovate Sequim’s Guy Cole Convention Center and to help Port Angeles prevent its shuttered 18th Street landfill from spilling into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
One House member, Steve Tharinger, a Sequim Democrat, said the Senate budget will not receive a warm welcome in his chamber.
The House-passed budget imposes a capital gains tax to fund, among other things, court-ordered state support for public education and for speedy mental evaluations of persons charged with crimes.
The GOP, however, has promised to levy no new taxes.
Republicans also hope to amend a voter-approved initiative to reduce class sizes and ask voters whether they agree with the change through a referendum.
Voters in November approved reducing class sizes for all grades, but the Senate plan — as in the House plan — pays only for reductions for kindergarten through third grade.
That change would go to voters for their approval or rejection under the Senate plan.
Tharinger said Republicans resorted to “double-booking” revenues into both the transportation budget and the state’s general fund to forestall new taxes.
“The math just does not add up,” he said, adding that Republicans had funded education with retail marijuana taxes even though that revenue only has been estimated.
“It’s a very distorted sort of magical-math budget,” Tharinger said.
“It’s going to take awhile for the negotiators to sort out just the [revenue] numbers, to say nothing of what you’re going to spend the revenue on.”
The dust-up well may put the Legislature’s adjournment— known as sine die, Latin for “without [another] day” — well past the scheduled April 26 date for legislators to head home.
“We may be here [in Olympia] until sometime in June,” Tharinger said with rueful chuckle.
Hargrove was careful to curb his words when he spoke to the Peninsula Daily News about the Thursday night voting move in the upper chamber.
“It was particularly offensive to me because I’ve worked in a bipartisan fashion pretty much my whole career,” he said.
“For them to be so crass in this was really problematic for me.”
Hargrove served in the state House from 1985 through 1992. In 1993, he was elected to the Senate.
“I’ve got longstanding relationships with people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate,” Hargrove said.
“There are plenty of good people left working in the Legislature. I think sometimes the next election plays into how things work more than it should.
“In the end game, the cooler heads prevail, and the best things happen for the good of the state. We just are going to have to let some feelings cool down.”
Tharinger wasn’t so diplomatic, saying he was deeply dismayed at how Hargrove had been treated.
“They just threw him under the bus,” he said. “They stopped working with him. He almost feels they impugned him, insulted him, so that really goes to his core.
“Jim has created a lot of support down here because of his integrity. He holds that trust, and dealing with people is probably his No. 1 issue rather than partisan politics.”
However, Hargrove sounded more weary than angry when he spoke with the PDN on Friday after catching a few hours of sleep.
Working across party lines, he said, “that’s kind of been my life’s work.
“It was a very difficult evening last night.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
