North Olympic Peninsula legislators plan to attend meetings in Olympia soon to discuss action in light of state Supreme Court sanctions.
None of the three who represent the 24th District — which covers Clallam and Jefferson counties and a portion of Grays Harbor County — says the governor should call a special legislative session, as the court suggested in its ruling Thursday.
“I don’t think it would be timely,” said state Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Sequim, who added that he would travel to Olympia next week for meetings on the issue.
State Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, also said he’d return to the Capitol “to do some more work on that in the next month or so” on a bipartisan proposal “to present to education groups to try to get some support.”
He added: “It wouldn’t be terribly productive for us to go back into another special session.”
State Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, said even if Gov. Jay Inslee follows the court’s suggestion to summon the Legislature into a fourth special session this year, “almost certainly nothing will happen.”
Beyond that consensus, the legislators had different opinions about how one branch of state government has ordered another branch on what to do.
Tharinger said the court’s requirement that state-sourced funds, not local levies, must fund basic education was too complex to solve in a special session.
Speaking of the state’s 295 school districts, “they’re all different,” he said.
“That difference and that diversity makes it very challenging, let alone the dollars to provide that parity [among them].”
Tharinger also noted that the Legislature already shrank class sizes in grades K-3 and secured a state attorney general’s opinion that it had met the court’s requirements to show progress in the McCleary decision by appropriating $1.3 billion toward basic education.
“It’s hard to imagine what the court is basing its decision on,” he said.
“It’s not that we haven’t been making the effort.”
Van De Wege said the court ruling would anger Republicans, who would be even less likely to approve new sources of revenue or reform existing taxes.
“This is really going to give the Republicans more power to say the court is really out of line. It’s going to put their backs up against the wall, and they’re going to want no more revenue even more,” he said.
“It’s angered a lot of Republicans, I know. Frankly, it’s angered me.”
The court also stepped out of bounds, he said, by ordering legislators on what to spend and how to spend it.
“They’re trying to do the budget the way they want, and that’s the Legislature’s sole job,” Van De Wege said.
Furthermore, the $100,000-a-day penalty probably would be pulled from social service programs, he said
“It’s money we don’t have to allot — to DSHS [Department of Social and Health Services], foster parents, helping kids get through college — that’s where that money is going to come from.
“More than anything, it’s really sad because they [the justices] had other options. It’s going to hurt people.”
Hargrove said the penalties would total $15 million by the time the Legislature begins its next regular session in January.
He said the amount was “not that much in relation to the entire amount of money we spend on education.”
Still, he said, the court was correct to underscore its point “that the Legislature didn’t come up with a complete solution to McCleary. It’s the Supreme Court saying the Legislature really needs to get that done.”
However, Hargrove said, “I knew that when we left [the last] session.”
“It was very, very difficult to get a budget done in time” to meet a July 1 deadline and prevent a partial state government shutdown, he said.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
