BY Joseph Turner
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com

The campaign for a temporary boost in the state sales tax hiccupped on Friday and Saturday, but the coalition that would mount the campaign is taking another look at making a run for the November ballot.

“We are reconsidering,” said Cassie Sauer, spokeswoman for the Washington State Hospital Association, a key player in the coalition. “We thought we might be out.”

Sauer said hospitals are in “deep conversation” about what to do next and are still planning to decide by Tuesday whether to help bankroll a referendum to raise the state sales tax by 0.3 percent for three years.

That proposal, which is before the Legislature in House Bill 2377, would raise about $1.1 billion to offset some of the cuts lawmakers are about to make to state funding for the Basic Health Plan, state payments to hospitals and nursing homes and state support for other health programs for the poor.

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I had to share this editorial,

From the Walla Walla paper.

And some of them already have been signed into law.

A helpful staffer passed on this information last night: "As of cut off (Friday night deadline) 289 House bills have passed Senate, and 254 Senate bills have passed House."

Just a little factoid to share with your friends.

This deserves a lot more attention than I can give it now. Maybe after the Legislature adjourns I can revisit the topic.

But one thing jumps out at me: There seems to be a seafood theme around the world when it comes to transit passes. We've got a "whale (orca)". Hong Kong has "octopus." London has "oyster."

Maybe we should have gone for a slogan like, "Get a smart card! Get a geoduck!"

ORCA (One Regional Card for All) is the Puget Sound region’s transportation smart card. Similar systems exist in Hong Kong (Octopus), London (Oyster), Seoul (I Am), Boston (Charlie Card), Washington, D.C. (SmarTrip), the Bay Area (TransLink) and Houston (Q Card), as well as other cities.

ORCA smart card limited rollout gets underway
Phased introduction begins April 20 and will continue through 2009

SEATTLE - Traveling the Puget Sound region by bus, train and ferry will get even easier this spring and summer with the arrival of ORCA—One Regional Card for All.

ORCA will make rummaging for correct change a thing of the past. When boarding, ORCA riders will simply tap their new smart cards on a reader device. The electronic fare system will replace about 300 various passes, tickets and transfers with a single card that works for all seven of the major public transportation agencies serving King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

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The 82,000-member Washington Education Association also is asking folks to inundate lawmakers with mailings during the final 10 days of the session.

Here's a link to the WEA page. Scroll down for the "show me the money" clip.

Union leaders were none too happy when the Senate passed House Bill 2261 earlier this week.

TNT columnist Peter Callaghan posted this item shortly before the bill passed.

After yesterday's committee hearing and news conference on the proposal to ask voters in November to boost the sales tax by 0.3 percent, I asked the House staff to show me where they were cutting the budget.

I wanted to match up the cuts with where the referendum would put money to "buy back" those cuts. The referendum would raise about $1.1 billion over three years. What I've shown below is only the cuts for the 2009-11 biennium and the buy-back for the remaining 18 months of that 24-month budget cycle.

Program...............House spending cuts........Money from referendum.
Nursing homes................($113.9 million)............$77.3 million
Mental Health.................($45.6 million)............$24.2 million
Hospitals, Healthy Options
managed care, pediatric.......($455 million)..............$108 million
Basic Health Plan.............($257.9 million)..........$167.4 million
Public Health.................($4 million)..................$3 million

One additional point: Jerry Reilly, chairman of the Elder Care Alliance, said some of the programs targeted to restoration are funded by federal Medicaid money, so if the feds were to match the eligible funds, Washington could pry loose an additional $500 million by spending the temporary tax funds on those programs, he said at Friday morning's hearing.

Austin Jenkins, Olympia correspondent for the Public Radio Northwest News Network, broke this story last night and you may have heard it on the radio today.

Cassie Sauer, vice president of the Washington State Hospital Association, said earlier this week that members of the ballot coalition would be using this weekend to go over results of polling from this past week. They've set a Tuesday deadline for member groups -- hospitals, nurses, unions, clinics -- to decide whether they are in or out of the tax campaign.

Polling Likely Sinks WA Tax Proposal

In a major development in the Washington legislature, majority Democrats in the Senate are backing off a plan to put a tax measure on the November ballot. That’s because of a new poll that shows the public’s appetite for taxes is lukewarm at best.

The poll was commissioned by hospitals and other healthcare groups. It finds that more than fifty percent of Washington voters might go for a temporary sales tax increase to prevent cuts to healthcare. But support is soft and not enough to guarantee success at the polls this fall. As a result, Senate Democrats met Friday evening and decided not to move forward with a sales tax – or alternatively – an income tax proposal this year. A spokesman for the Washington State Senate Democrats says: “The caucus decided that any revenue package would likely be perceived by the public as making the economic recession worse so there’s no support for sending a ballot measure to the public to raise taxes.” The sudden turnaround came on the same day House Democrats held a hearing on a proposal to ask voters to raise Washington’s sales tax by three-tenths-of-one-percent for healthcare. The sponsor of that proposal – Representative Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle - says despite the new poll he plans to continue pushing his measure in the House.

I’m Austin Jenkins in Olympia.

Copyright 2009 KUOW
Austin Jenkins
Olympia Correspondent
Public Radio Northwest News Network