OLYMPIA — Though the North Olympic Peninsula’s elected voices under the state Capitol dome described this year’s legislative session as onerous and frustrating, all three legislators counted some successes of their own for 2013.
But it wasn’t easy.
“This was the most difficult session I’ve been through,” said state Sen. Jim Hargrove, a Hoquiam Democrat and 28-year veteran of the state Legislature.
“I was just buried in the budget process.”
Hargrove, along with state Reps. Steve Tharinger and Kevin Van De Wege, both Sequim Democrats, serve the 24th Legislative District, which comprises Clallam and Jefferson counties and a portion of Grays Harbor County.
For the vast majority of this year’s regular legislative session and the entirety of the two 30-day special sessions that followed, Hargrove worked with both Democratic and Republican lead budget writers from both chambers to develop priorities for the state’s 2013-2015 biennium budget.
Hargrove said challenges were present from the very beginning, with budget negotiators contending with an initial $900 million budget shortfall and a state Supreme Court mandate to increase state education funding by $1 billion.
As the months rolled on, Hargrove said negotiators drilled through the budget line by line, pulling out and discussing portions that should either be kept or tossed away.
“It was pretty much everyone wanting to stick to their position until the last possible minute and wait for the other people to give,” Hargrove said.
“And in the end, both sides ended up giving, which is what you might expect.”
The last minute did eventually come last weekend, when Gov. Jay Inslee signed a $33.6 billion state operating budget into law.
“The balance we struck is something that I’m very pleased with,” Hargrove said.
More specifically, Hargrove said he was glad the budget met the $1 billion education funding mandate while keeping the state’s “safety-net” for low-income and disabled residents mostly intact.
Though the final stretch meant many 12-hour days in a row in Olympia for the Hoquiam Democrat, Hargrove said he was glad the time was taken to go over the budget with a fine-toothed comb.
“I think it’s more crucial that we get a good result than if we did something quick and get a bad result,” Hargrove said.
Reps. Tharinger and Van De Wege generally shared Hargrove’s view on the final balance the budget struck, though they were less than thrilled with the time it took to get there.
“We came up with a down payment [for education], but the real difference is how the House and Senate wanted to do it,” Tharinger said.
“It took a lot longer than anyone really anticipated, but in the end we got there.”
Van De Wege said he thinks a more secure majority from either party in the Senate probably would have moved a budget through more quickly than the Senate majority caucus, made up of Senate Republicans and two Democrats.
“[The majority caucus was] barely grasping on to power, and that caused a lot of problems,” Van De Wege said.
A major sticking point between Democrats and Republicans for most of the session was the issue of tax exemptions, Tharinger said.
Democrats generally wanted to do away with them to create new revenue, Tharinger explained, while Republicans saw deletion of existing exemptions as new taxes.
In the end, the final operating budget continued or added about 17 tax exemptions.
These including an extension of a tax break for companies, such as paper mills, that buy and burn wood waste known as hog fuel for energy; an exemption all three of the 24th District’s legislators supported.
“This exemption really maintains hundreds of jobs in the 24th district,” Tharinger said.
One major budget-related element that failed was a state-wide transportation funding package, which passed in the House days before the final special session ended but was not taken up for a vote in the Senate.
“I didn’t really see a path [for] it moving out of the Senate,” Van De Wege said, who initially voted against the measure because it included a 10.5-cent gas tax increase.
Van De Wege ultimately voted for it, alongside Tharinger.
“We all have to take some votes we don’t like at the end of session. That was one of them for me,” Van De Wege said.
“In order for things to move, we had to get that transportation budget out of there.”
Hargrove said he likely would have voted against the transportation revenue package with its gas tax increase, unless the package included a voter referendum on the tax itself.
“It’s a very impactful tax on our specific constituents,” Hargrove said.
On a personal level, Hargrove said seven of the 22 bills he originally introduced at the beginning of the session were ultimately passed into law, including a piece of legislation clarifying requirements for certain institutions reporting runaway children and a bill establishing an industrial insurance subsidy program for high-risk jobs in the logging and forest product industries.
Elements of an education reform bill Hargrove was champing focusing on using evidence-based programs to improve childhood learn also made it into the final budget document, Hargrove said.
Four of the 16 bills Tharinger introduced survived the sessions in some form, including the hog fuel tax exemption and money for a special committee to study the needs of the state’s aging population.
Tharinger said he will likely serve on this committee when it first meets in late summer, with a draft report on the aging issue due by the end of the year.
One of the nine bills Van De Wege introduced made it into law: a requirement that state school districts with high schools include instruction in cardiopulmonary resuscitation — or CPR — in health classes students have to take as a graduation requirement.
Van De Wege, a firefighter/paramedic with Clallam County Fire District No. 3, said the CPR instruction itself won’t be a requirement for graduation, though he said he thinks it will go a long way toward equipping high schoolers with the tools they can use to save lives.
“I’m really proud of that,” Van De Wege said.
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
