I don't mean to steal the thunder from Rep. Hans Dunshee's news conference on Monday. He did. He filed House Bill 2334 on Friday and it lays out some of the details of his plan.

But I can't find all the sources of money.

Here's a link to the bill.

The bill says one source of money to pay for part of the $3 billion Dunshee wants to borrow is the "savings" that state agencies realize after they've made their buildings more energy efficient.

Half of that savings is supposed to make payments on the borrowed money. So, if the state prison system saves $100,000 a year on its heating and lighting bills by installing solar panels on the roof of the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, the Department of Corrections has to turn over $50,000 from its budget to make payments on the borrowed money.

"The Legislature may provide additional means for raising money," but the bill doesn't say what those other means might be. I guess that's the main thing Dunshee, D-Snohomish, and chairman of the House Capital Budget Committee, is holding in reserve.

His plan would be put to a public vote at the November general election.

Oh yes. The bill also divvies up the money: $2 billion would go to the state's K-12 system. Each of 296 school districts would get $100,000. (I think that adds up to $29.6 million. And the rest of that $2 billion would be divided up based on how many of the state's 1 million students are attending school in those districts.

It appears $500 million goes to state colleges:
--$286 million to the 2-year community and technical colleges.
--$79.1 million to the University of Washington.
--$45.7 million to Washington State University.
--$25 million to Western Wasington University.
--$19.1 million to Eastern Washington University.
--$18.8 million to Central Washington University.
--$8.6 million to The Evergreen State College.

I'm not sure where the remaining $500 million goes. I guess we'll all find out Monday.

Dunshee said Friday his proposal would create 90,000 jobs, enough to offset the cumulative job losses for 2008 and 2009.

Dale Washam hasn't taken kindly to the Pierce County Council telling him how to run his office.

The new assessor-treasurer this week bristled when the council used a budget ordinance to tell him he can't lay off appraisers and should work with the state on a new plan to inspect properties. (The council's moves were a reaction to Washam's recent announcement that the office had skipped tens of thousands of property inspections under his predecessor.)

Now Washam is questioning whether the council has the authority to attach those kind of strings to his budget. Here's a letter he sent to the council today.

April 3, 2009

Roger Bush
Chairman Pierce County Council

Subject: Proviso’s in proposal 2009-16s

Dear Roger,

I am respectfully requesting you, to please cite the authority that gives the council the right to make the following provisos set forth in Ordinance 2009-16s, as stated below, regarding the budget cut to the Assessor-Treasurer’s office.

Proviso #1 – “provided, there will be no reduction in the number of appraisers employed by the Assessor-Treasurer’s office.”

Proviso #2 - “provided further, the Assessor-Treasurer is requested to work with the Washington state Department of Revenue to develop a new six-year revaluation plan that will meet the requirements of state law.”

The Pierce County Charter Article 2, Section 2.40 states:

“Except in the performance of its legislative functions under this Charter, the Council, its staff, and individual Council members shall have no power to direct, either publicly or privately, any officer or employee subject to the supervision of the Executive or other elected officials.”

=> Read more!

With the House and Senate proposing to shift $700 million to $800 million from building projects to help out programs -- schools, health, prisons -- in the operating budget, there's going to be lots of folks complaining about how their particular project didn't get paid for.

It ain't $9 billion, but $780 million is still a lot of money.

BY Joseph Turner
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com

Supporters of a vocational skills center near Frederickson in Pierce County appear to have struck out in their effort to get more state money for the project.

The governor’s mid-December budget proposal had no money for it. The Senate budget that came out Wednesday had none. And supporters got their third strike Friday when they tried to amend the House capital budget to include $20 million that would have been spread among several skills center, including the one in the Bethel School District -- and failed.

State Rep. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, asked members of the House Capital Budget Committee to approve her proposal to shift $30 million from a program that buys property for recreation and purchases development rights to preserve farmland and earmark $20 million of it for the skills center program. The money would have been divvied up by the state schools superintendents’ office. The other $10 million would have been earmarked for state parts.

=> Read more!

Today's committee hearing was only a prelude to an actual confirmation.

The Senate Natural Resources, Ocean and Recreation Committee met to consider the confirmation of Miranda Wecker, who was appointed to the Fish and Wildlife Commission by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Wecker has been on the commission for almost four year now, and is, in fact, its chairwoman. But her tenure has coincided with considerable unrest among sport and commercial fishers, (what else is new?) and some blame her.

I couldn't stay for the whole hearing, but my colleague at The Spokesman Review, Rich Roesler, was there and filed a report.

Here is a link to Roesler's story, complete with pictures. (Rich is a one-man publishing machine!)

Thanks, Rich.

You've probably heard something about this already. This is sorta what Gov. Chris Gregoire was referring to a few weeks back when she talked about a possible construction bond measure on the ballot to fix up schools and other stuff.

Who's idea was that?

Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, chairman of the House Capital Budget Commitee, isn't saying what the source of money would be to pay for the $3 billion worth of project. I guess we'll all find out Monday. And whether he had any other backing in the Legislature. And when it might appear on the ballot. And what state Treasurer Jim McIntire thinks about it.

JOBS PACKAGE
Noon on Monday, April 6
House Hearing Room A
John L. O'Brien Building

Rep. Hans Dunshee will announce details of a bonds package to create up to 90,000 construction jobs in Washington state.
Due to the global recession, the state lost 40,000 jobs in 2008 and is expected to lose 40,000 in 2009.

And just because it seems to be germane, here is a news release from said state Treasurer McIntire, about how good Washington's bond rating remains. A bond rating used to make a difference in how low an interest rate the state got when it went to borrow money (high rating, low interest). These days, I'm told it could decide whether or not anyone will lend to the state at all.

April 3, 2009
Washington State Maintains Outstanding Credit Rating:

=> Read more!

I had the opportunity of sitting in on an Editorial Board meeting at the newspaper today with University of Washington president Mark Emmert and a couple of other state higher ed luminaries.

Emmert said that while people in higher ed have a tendency to "cry wolf" the proposed cuts by the state House and Senate were "truly horrible." They're deeper proportionally than any other state in the country except Nevada.

He's lobbying for a tuition hike of 14 percent or about $875 per academic year to help make up for the legislature's proposed cuts. (That's double the proposed 7 percent hike.)

And while that sounds like a heck of lot to anyone in school or to parents with kids about to enter college he justified it two ways.

First, he said that even with such an increase, UW would remain one of the most affordable schools among its peers.

He also brought a chart that said financial aid increases and changes to federal education tax credits would render the $875 increase completely harmless for any family making less than $160,000.

Economic stimulus seems to be on everybody's minds lately...

For Immediate Press Release,

The 26 LD Democrats proudly announces their upcoming monthly April 7th meeting. Featured Speakers will be Kitsap County Commissioners Charlotte Garrido and Josh Brown speaking on the current State of the County. How has the short fall in taxes impacted us? What can we expect from the Obama bailout package? Also, are we in Kitsap County going to be able to attract “Green Jobs”?

Also on the agenda will be Fire Chief Wayne Center presenting information about upcoming the fire levy.

The date is Tuesday April 7th at 6 PM for dinner and 7 PM for the meeting. The location is Givens Community Center, Kitsap Room, 1026 Sidney Ave. Port Orchard WA. 98366. The meeting is free and the general public is welcome. For more information call Chairman Mark Brown at 360-895-6033.

Submitted respectfully by,

Mark Brown
26th LD Democratic Chair

9th District congressman Adam Smith will be speaking to the Tacoma City Club at a breakfast meeting next Wednesday.

By the way, Smith already has a challenger for 2010 -- State Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Roy, announced his candidacy several weeks ago.

Congressman Adam Smith: Challenges and Opportunities of the 111th Congress

Tacoma, WA – April 2, 2009 Join Congressman Adam Smith at a special breakfast program, co-sponsored by the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce and City Club of Tacoma. Congressman Smith will speak to the challenges of crafting legislation to help the nation recover from the economic downturn. He will also discuss his two new roles – on the Select Committee on Intelligence and as Chair of the New Democrat Coalition’s Trade Task Force.

Location: Landmark Convention Center, 47 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma
Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Time: 7:30 a.m.
Cost: $17

Reservations are recommended by April 6 at 253-272-9561, www.cityclubtacoma.org.

=> Read more!

News comes out of the Legislature like a fire hose when lawmakers are in session and many of those events occur at the same time. Such was the case yesterday, when House Speaker Frank Chopp held his meeting with reporters at 2 p.m. and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown held hers a bit later.

I chose, instead, to cover the House Transportation Committee meeting from 1:30 until about 4 p.m. (that's when I left) because they were supposed to vote on both the 520 bridge project and the Alaskan Way Viaduct bill. They did the viaduct; the bridge vote comes Monday.

So I couldn't make it to Brown's media availability, but Josh Feit over at Publicola was there, and here's his take on things.

That's the question posed by one of our readers, Ed Shadle of Spanaway. And since blogs are intended to be forums for discussion, I'll leave it to his fellow readers to answer the question.

Pay cuts are becoming more prevalent in the private sector, to which I and many of my fellow newspaper industry workers can attest. And state agencies are being told to encourage voluntary unpaid furloughs for workers to avoid layoffs.

The Legislature has come up with about $4 billion in "hard cuts" to fill a projected $9 billion shortfall over the next 28 months.

I'm pretty sure that any proposal to cut state worker pay would have to be bargained by unions and state management. (They are already foregoing 2 percent pay raises over the next two years.) But such would not be the case for managers and other workers who are not represented by unions.

I'll put a call into the Federation when I get into the office.

Anyway, here's the e-mail that prompted this posting:

From: ED SHADLE
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 4:28 PM
To: Turner, Joe - Tacoma
Subject: Budget

For the life of me, I don't understand why our state employees cannot take a temporary
(1 year) pay reduction of 10%. They already make better wages and benefits than similar jobs in the private sector. Why can't they tighten their belts like the rest of us.

I've sent this same idea to Gov. Gregoire, Ken Schram and a few others with no reply at all. I agree it wouldn't solve the entire problem but it sure would put a dent in the problem. Rather than shutting down offices and putting layed off employees on the unemployment rolls (more tax money being paid out to people who are now doing nothing) just reduce the salaries a little bit until the economy recovers.

One additional note, when I see new equipment being driven by government workers, why can't they keep some of the equipment in service a little longer? Why don't they just do a little maintenance on the equipment rather than constantly keeping us tax payers in dept by running around in new trucks, cars and so on?

Sincerely,
Ed Shadle, Spanaway