OLYMPIA — See-nah-DEE-yay or sigh-nee DYE?
It’s not how you say sine die; it’s when you get to say the phrase that signals the Legislature’s official adjournment. But no one’s likely to say it for at least a month, according to two North Olympic Peninsula legislators.
The Legislature has gone into an extended session that state Sen. Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam and state Rep. Steve Tharinger of Sequim both expect will last at least 30 days at a cost to taxpayers of close to $500,000.
Hargrove, Tharinger and Rep. Kevin Van De Wege of Sequim represent the 24th District that includes all of Clallam and Jefferson counties and most of Grays Harbor County. All are Democrats.
As for those magic words, the first pronunciation is how Latin scholars say them; the latter, how lawmakers enunciate them — usually gleefully — when gavels fall for the final time in the House and Senate.
Literally, sine die means “without [another] day.” Freely translated, it means “no tomorrow.” Practically speaking, the term translates as sayonara, auf wiedersehen and adios as lawmakers head home.
The current session, set by statute at 105 days, ended Friday after only 103 days with legislators agreeing to reassemble Wednesday.
In other words, they didn’t declare sine die but vowed to fight another die — to fight their political foes, mostly.
For taxpayers, it means paying legislators $120 more each day they stay in session, besides the $42,106 each member is paid annually.
The meter rings up $17,640 alone for lawmakers every day before they adjourn sine die. If the session lasts another month, that’s almost $500,000 — even if lawmakers take weekends off.
Van De Wege noted the two legislative chambers are controlled by opposing parties.
Democrats in the House have proposed capital, transportation and operating budgets that would rely on new revenue sources, including a tax on capital gains, he said.
Republicans in the Senate have promised to adopt no new taxes, although they’ve approved an 11.7-cent-per-gallon hike in the price of gasoline.
About $1.5 billion separates the rival plans for capital improvements, transportation and operations.
Still, “I think there’s the potential to make this a very short special session,” Van De Wege told Peninsula Daily News on Friday.
“I think both sides know where we need to go. It’s just a matter of getting people there.”
Tharinger and Hargrove weren’t so optimistic, for the way to “there” includes plotting a route around state Supreme Court sanctions.
Justices already have cited legislators for contempt for not meeting the court’s order to reform how the state supports education.
Under the court’s McCleary decision, local property taxes no longer can form the financial foundation for public schools, justices ruled in 2012.
They gave lawmakers until 2018 to meet that goal and until the end of this legislative session to show progress or else.
Else what? No one wants to speculate on what Hargrove has called a potential constitutional crisis between two branches of state government.
So far, neither chamber has convinced the other of a funding scheme, although Hargrove has proposed a one-tenth of 1 percent increase in the present 7 percent tax on capital gains, and Tharinger has proposed reforming the state Business and Occupation Tax and imposing sales taxes on out-of-state purchases via the Internet.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn has proposed sweeping local school levy revenues into the state’s general fund, and state Treasurer James McIntire has mentioned the ordinarily unmentionable notion of a state income tax.
Neither idea has gained much traction with lawmakers.
For the 24th District, the impasse holds hostage $7 million to help remediate Port Angeles’ former landfill at the end of West 18th Street that threatens to spill into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, plus nearly $24 million for a new Allied Health and Early Childcare center at Peninsula College.
Moreover, the standoff leaves on the back burner $1.5 million the Senate allocated to clean up the former KPly mill site on Marine Drive in Port Angeles, $2.8 million for a variety of improvements at Fort Worden State Park, and $1.5 million to replace a fire-gutted building for the Department of Natural Resources Olympic Region at 411 Tillicum Lane, Forks.
Then there’s a bundle of water-quality and fish-habitat enhancements that would benefit not only salmon but the tourist fishing industry too.
Moreover, Hargrove’s ambitious Justice Reinvestment Initiative, which would cut some prison terms but extend supervision for people convicted of property crimes, remains stuck in the House.
The Democratic leaders of the House and the Republicans who control the Senate, Hargrove told the PDN, “decide the lay of the land or the shape of the table or whatever you want to call it,
“I hope that gets cranked up pretty darned soon.”
That could be the easy part, Tharinger said.
“There’s the negotiations themselves, defining what you’re going to spend your money on, what that costs and where you’re going to get the money from,” he said.
“Then there’s the mechanics of getting the bills drafted and redrafted and put through committees and subcommittees and all that.”
Even if the two sides reached an agreement today, the pencil pushing would take at least three days to draft the legislation, Tharinger said.
And as June looms nearer, so does the state’s quarterly forecasts of revenues — an official prediction, plus unofficial optimistic and pessimistic estimates, he said.
“It should be a positive number,” Tharinger said, “but no one I’ve talked to says that it will be big enough to resolve the [$1.5 billion] difference.”
“I think we’re pretty close to agreement that we need to spend more money on education and more money on mental health [to meet a U.S. District Court-order for speedy competency examinations of defendants who may be mentally ill],” Tharinger added.
“The big question is where that money comes from.”
Hargrove wasn’t entirely downhearted about the extended session. It’s pretty much what he’d expected.
“Most of the budget sessions I’ve lived through have gone into special sessions, especially when you have a shared government,” said Hargrove, referring to opposing parties’ controlling separate chambers.
Hargrove served in the state House from 1985 to 1992 and has held his Senate seat since 1993.
So from any partisan point of view — or just from the position of someone waiting to turn a shovel of dirt at a state-funded construction site — the message for legislators isn’t “Never say die.”
It’s “Say ‘Sigh-nee DYE’ or even ‘See-nah-DEE-yay’” if they must.
They just hope to say it soon.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
