I'm told the House Finance Committee on Thursday will pass out 2nd Substitute House Bill 2029, a measure that will raise the monthly fee on telephone service for E-911 to 25 cents (from 20 cents) for the state share and to 70 cents (from 50 cents) for the counties' share.

Here's a bill report for HB 2029, but it isn't up to date. This 2nd substitute has only one increase.

The original bill called for a 3-stage phase-in, until it got to $1.50 a month in 2014.

It will give you the background on the E-911 taxes (which would changed to "fees" in this bill) and will show that Verizon, T-Mobile, ATT and the the Broadband Cable Association opposed the earler versions of the bill. The tax-that-would-be-a-fee also applies to cell phones and voice over internet phone service.

The emergency operators obviously are hoping to raise a lot of money, but I don't have a fiscal note yet.

The Law Enforcement Support Agency, the main record-keepers and dispatch center for Tacoma and Pierce County police, sheriff and fire, supports the fee. So does the Tacoma City Council, as long as the money goes to the call centers, said Tacoma lobbyist Randy Lewis.

Only one-third of the money goes there now, he said.

More on this later. I got a late start on covering this bill. The tax vs. fee label is important: Taxes need a two-thirds vote of approval from the Legislature or a public vote; fees need only a simple majority vote and no public vote.

I'm sure Tim Eyman will weigh in on this bill some time soon.

I found out the hard way that the best way to attract lots of calls and e-mails is to say that Dixy Lee Ray is from Tacoma.

Sure, she graduated from Stadium High School but the place that claims her as their own – even when others were rejecting her – is Fox Island. That's where she lived for most of her adulthood (when not in Olympia as governor or Washington, D.C. as chairwoman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Her home there also was her escape while serving as the state's first female governor from 1977 to 1981.

So it is appropriate that the historical museum would gather some Dixy stuff and put it on display.

Here is an article on the exhibit in our sister paper, the Peninsula Gateway.

The bill that just passed the Washington Senate on a 48-0 vote, adds those electrical shock devices to the list of things students can't bring to school in their lunch boxes or back packs.

Here is the full text of Senate Bill 5263.

And here is the item I posted back on Feb. 9, when I saw that Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, had introduced it.

House Bill 1978 is the state supplemental transportation budget for 2007-09, but it contains an extra $344 million in federal stimulus money.

UPDATE: The governor says she's going to sign the bill at 2 p.m. Thursday.

And of note to Pierce County, it also shifts some federal and state money around. The net effect is to put construction of the second half of the Nalley Valley Viaduct back on schedule.

Gov. Chris Gregoire had proposed delaying construction of the eastbound Nalley Valley bridge until 2013-15. The rewritten budget puts that project back in the 2011-13 time frame.

Here is a link to our TNT home page, which has the story that AP reporter Curt Woodward wrote after the bill passed the House this morning.

Here's a state Senate news release, which also notes the Alaskan Way Viaduct bill the Senate passed a few minutes earlier. See my earlier post with the "greenest guy on the floor of the Senate" headline.

The budget bill goes to the governor. The viaduct bill goes to the House.

Senate passes transportation stimulus and viaduct replacement bills
OLYMPIA — Today the Senate passed one bill identifying projects throughout Washington that will receive the state’s portion of federal transportation stimulus funding and another to approve a deep-bore tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

=> Read more!

This is my new nominee for best quote of the session:

"I guess I've become the greenest guy on the floor of the Senate," said Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam.

(Who woulda thunk?)

Hargrove made that remark during debate on a bill that gives the Senate's blessing to a deep-bored tunnel to replace Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct. That's the deal the Gov. Chris Gregoire worked out with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and (still) King County Executive Ron Sims.

Hargrove actually was explaining why he was voting "no" on the bill.

Basically, it perpetuates the use of the automobile, which flies in the face of all the climate-change, green jobs and everything enviro that Senate Democrats are doing this session.

"And we’re going to be spending $2.4 billion on a transportation corridor for the automobile," Hargrove said.

Senate Bill 5768 passed on a 43-6 vote.

Prime sponsor, Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, said even though the cost now will be an estimated $4.24 billion, the state still is committed to no more than $2.4 billion. The state may get an additional $400 million for the project from tolling, but that still in not a certainty. The bill calls for a study to further examine the feasiblility of tolling the 1.7-mile tunnel under downtown Seattle.

I have a list of taxes that legislators probably are examining to determine which ones are best suited to help them get out of their $8 billion budget hole, assuming voters approve of them, of course.

It's on paper, so I have to retype it, and I'm not going to type all of them into this blog post. But I'll try to give you a flavor.

UPDATE: Here is a more recent list, November 2008.

"This is a list of options for raising revenues that have been commonly requested. The Department (of Revenue) does not advocate these options; we consider them to be administrable."

I'm using numbers from the July 2008, which may overstate amounts since we really went into the tank afterward. The chart shows how much money would be raised from each of the taxes in the 2009-11 biennium, as well as for each single fiscal year in the biennium. It also assumes the effective date for any of the taxes would be July 1, 2009, the first day of the 2009-11 biennium.

Mike Gowrylow of the Department of Revenue says his agency does this list every quarter, so it wasn't ordered up special by legislative leaders this time. That said, it must be awfully helpful to them in the tax deliberations that they are not having.

I'll be using some elements of this for a story I'm writing about the budget deficit, a story that probably will run in a week or so.

Anyway, here ya go! (All figures are for 2-year period.) Does anyone feel as if they are in the cross-hairs of a tax increase?

NEW TAXES
Soft drinks: 5 cents per 12 oz. can at wholesale: $277 million.
Bottled water: 1 cent per ounce at wholesale: $366 million.

REAL ESTATE EXCISE TAX
Raise rate to 1.6 percent from 1.28 percent: $381.4 million.

CIGARETTE TAX
Raise by 25 cents per pack (net gain): $56.4 million

OIL SPILL TAX
Boost oil spill tax to 5 percent value of barrell: $1.278 billion

ESTATE TAX
Double estate tax rates: $237.5 million.

RETAIL SALES AND USE TAX
--Raise state sales tax from 6.5 to 6.6 percent: $225 million.
--Raise state sales tax to 7 percent: $1.12 billion.
--Raise state sales tax to 7.5 percent: $2.23 billion.

=> Read more!

That $8 million Pierce County revenue shortfall keeps getting bigger.

Budget Director Pat Kenney confirms that sales tax revenue from January and February are down 13 percent from the same period a year ago. He cautioned not to read too much into that figure.

“You can’t just take those two months and prorate it for the whole year,” Kenney said, but added. “It obviously makes us more concerned than we were two months ago.”

Bottom line: Kenney now estimates a revenue shortfall of $10 million to $12 million for 2009.

“If the world continues to worsen, of course, it will be more than that,” he said.

The news comes as the County Council prepares to consider budget cuts and other measures to plug what was thought to be an $8 million hole. The council will meet as a “committee of the whole” next Tuesday and Wednesday morning to discuss the budget.

On the agenda: County Executive Pat McCarthy’s plan to balance the budget in part by cutting spending in numerous departments. The sheriff’s and corrections departments would see cuts of less than 1 percent. Other departments – including the council, executive, auditor and assessor-treasurer’s offices – would see 3 percent cuts.

You can download an Excel spreadsheet detailing the cuts here.

For now, Kenney said his office is not asking the council for additional cuts.

Council Chairman Roger Bush, R-Graham, said he’s not sure yet whether the council will seek to fill a budget hole beyond $8 million when it meets next week.

But he said next week’s budget hearings are the kind usually held only in the fall as the council is preparing the annual budget. And he said cuts the council made last year have left the county in a better position than it otherwise might have been.

“I’m confident we’ll work through this and the core missions of Pierce County government will be fulfilled,” Bush said.

Apparently, we didn't have room for this in today's print edition, so I'm posting The Associated Press story on state Rep. Tami Green's proposal to make breast-feeding in public places a constitutionally protected civil right. House Bill 1596 passed the House on a 93-0 and has been sent to the Senate.

By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Associated Press Writer

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) _ Breast-feeding mothers would gain civil rights protections against discrimination for nursing in public under a bill approved by the state House on Tuesday.

Mothers already are protected from public indecency criminal charges for publicly nursing in Washington. But under the measure approved Tuesday, women also would be protected from discrimination when nursing in movie theaters, parks, shopping malls, concert theaters, schools and hospitals _ just to name a few.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tami Green, D-Lakewood, was approved unanimously by the House. It now moves on to further consideration by the state Senate.

Although breast-feeding is the healthiest way to nourish infants in their early months, women who breast-feed have been stigmatized in the past, and even encouraged to use bottled milk or baby formula while in public, bill supporters said.

=> Read more!

OK. That probably wasn't the best use of the language there, but I was trying to reach readers in the generation of Cheech and Chong. And I was in a hurry.

My second choice for a headline was: "Smoke Dope. It helps alleviate budget pains at all levels of government."

Anyway, the American Civil Liberties Union Washington sent out an e-mail news release yesterday, showing how lowering the penalty for possession of marijuana would actually save the state, cities, counties, courts, prosecutors money because of lower costs.

Plus, the $100 fine would raise even more money. About $17 million a year (?) or biennium. Read the fiscal note.

Here is the bill report for Senate Bill 5615. The bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now awaits a vote by the full Senate.

Marijuana Reclassification Will Generate Significant Savings and Revenue

Senate Bill 5615 would reclassify adult possession of no more than 40 grams of marijuana to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty earmarked for the Criminal Justice Treatment Account.

According to the fiscal note prepared by the Washington State Office of Financial Management, passage of SB 5615 is projected to bring significant revenue and savings to government.

Reduced Costs:
City court costs.....$2,350,000
County court costs....2,190,000
State court.............185,000
Prosecution...........4,667,520
Public defense........4,936,800
Jail sentences........1,679,040
TOTAL SAVINGS.......$16,008,360

=> Read more!

This is a follow-up to my post from Tuesday.

House Republicans wanted to put Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, on the spot and force him to make a ruling on whether it takes a two-thirds supermajority vote to eliminate a tax break. Alas, Chopp's stand-in, Rep. Jeff Morris, D-Mount Vernon, said as acting speaker he wasn't going to make a ruling because the bill that Republicans chose as a test case was not up for a final vote. So it was too early.

Here is the GOP take on things. Their news release has the full verbatim exhange, all of which was pretty much scripted to make a clear record.

House Democrats refuse to say whether they will respect the will of the people, I-960
House Republicans press for answers, taxpayer protection

House Republicans are asking House Speaker Frank Chopp to rule on whether the Washington State House of Representatives can repeal an established tax exemption with a simple majority vote. They believe it should take a two-thirds vote, as outlined by voter-approved Initiative 960. Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Morris ducked the underlying question in the following exchange with Republican House Floor Leader Doug Ericksen on the House floor today:

=> Read more!