By Grace Swanson
WNPA Olympia News Bureau
OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee has signed into law legislation that will keep the local school levy lid at 28 percent until 2019. That lid was scheduled to drop to 24 percent in 2018.
“By this bill, we are going to rescue our schools from the levy cliff,” he said during a news conference Wednesday.
A levy cliff can occur when the levy lid, the amount that local school districts can raise through voter-approved special operating and maintenance levies, is lowered without additional funding coming from the state.
This can lead to teacher dismissals, program cuts and students without access to resources.
The law takes effect July 23.
McCleary decision
He also added that passing this bill, SB 5023, won’t remove the legislature’s motivation to put forth a plan to fund basic education as mandated by the state Supreme Court in the McCleary decision.
“It clears the way for legislators to focus on the larger task at hand: fully funding education this year,” he said.
In 2010, the court determined that the state wasn’t fulfilling its constitutional duty to fund basic education and ordered the Legislature to implement a funding plan by Sept. 1, 2018.
Meanwhile, the Legislature’s delay in meeting its duty has accumulated a daily $100,000 penalty, imposed by the court in 2015, that has now reached $58 million.
Currently, most districts may raise up to 28 percent of their operating revenue through voter-approved property tax levies. A levy base is calculated by adding state and federal funding.
Voter-approved tax levies are intended to fund programs and expenditures outside of basic education, but districts sometimes use these funds to pay for basic education programs and functions when state dollars aren’t sufficient.
SB 5023
SB 5023 was passed by the House on March 9, with 87 in support, 10 opposed and one excused. On March 8, the Senate passed the bill with 48 in support and one opposed.
Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island, was the main sponsor of the bill. This is her first session as a senator.
Amendments to SB 5023 put forward by Sen. Joe Fain, R-Auburn, were adopted March 8 before it earned final passage. The changes require districts to create separate accounts for local and state funds. Also, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) must approve a local levy before a district can bring it to the voters.
In January, the House passed a companion bill, HB 1059, freezing the levy lid at 28 percent. Democratic senators tried and failed to bring the bill to the floor a few days later. HB 1059 was given a public hearing in the Senate Committee on Ways & Means, but no further action was taken.
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This story is part of a series of news reports from the Washington State Legislature provided through a reporting internship sponsored by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. Reach reporter Grace Swanson at grace.swanson47@gmail.com.
