2.21.17
Suggested lead: School districts throughout the state are
nervously watching the state Senate, hoping for action on a particular piece of
legislation that seems to be going nowhere. Dan Frizzell has that story.
Wrap (:90 total): The first piece of legislation passed by
the House this year was the so-called levy cliff bill.
It promises school districts that regardless of what lawmakers do about
education funding in the current session, districts will have at least as much
money to work with next year as they did this year.
Without the levy cliff bill, Washington school districts have no
assurances that they wouldn’t see a precipitous drop in local funding for the
2017-18 school year. They’re writing next year’s budgets right – a difficult
process if you don’t know how much you’ll have to spend. The bipartisan bill
sailed through the House last month but is being ignored in the
Republican-controlled Senate.
Democratic House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan is frustrated by the Senate’s
refusal to act.
SULLIVAN: "Something needs to be done.
They’re actually very nervous about putting that budget together.
And they don’t want to also do two separate budgets, one that assume the
levy cliff happens, one that assumes that it doesn’t.
What’s the harm in doing this bill?
All it does is provide assurance to our local school districts that
they’re going to get no less money next year. I just can’t understand why they
can’t pass that simple bill that passed out of here with strong bipartisan
support." [:24]
School directors from both sides of the Cascades visited the state Capitol
Tuesday to urge Republican Senate leaders to allow a vote on the levy cliff
bill. Those requests seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and districts say they’ll
soon have to send pink slips to teachers who could be laid off next year without
this legislative insurance policy. In Olympia, I'm Dan Frizzell.