The New Year Agenda

In advance of this year's legislative session, which begins Monday, Jan. 9, lawmakers are talking up new, tough penalties on sex offenders and the necessity of maintaining budget discipline. What happened? Aren't the Democrats still in charge of state government?

It's an election year. Yes, the Democrats are still in control of the governor's mansion and both houses of the state Legislature, but they don't want the voting public to think they are weak-kneed, spendthrift liberals. This year's legislative session is short, just 60 days, and in November all members of the state House (currently controlled by the Democrats 55-43) and half the members of the state Senate (controlled 26-23 by the Dems) are facing re-election. Democrats are already looking ahead to the election, anticipating that Republicans will attack them for raising taxes, increasing government spending, and failing to keep children safe from criminals. Democratic leaders want to hit back by promoting themselves as guardians of public safety and the public purse who invest wisely in the state's future. They'll be blasting the Republicans for failing to support "kitchen table" issues— education, health, and jobs. It's a tough balancing act for Gov. Christine Gregoire, state House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, and state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, but all three leaders seem to be reading from the same playbook, even if they are on slightly different pages.

This year, Gregoire actually has an opportunity to prepare and advance a legislative agenda. Last year, the state was embroiled in the bitter gubernatorial election controversy between Gregoire and her Republican opponent, former state Sen. Dino Rossi of Sammamish. The brouhaha clearly damaged Gregoire's public approval ratings, which have languished throughout 2005 according to a series of public opinion polls by Survey USA, a firm that works for TV stations around the country including KING-TV. In Survey USA's latest poll, on Dec. 20, 2005, Gregoire's approval rating was at 43 percent, ranking her 39th out of 50 governors in home state popularity.

Gregoire has shaken up her staff—her communications director and political director have both left—and she is undergoing a makeover. Gregoire's public image has suffered from being fuzzy—people don't know what she stands for. She's also seen as personally cold. Warm and fuzzy, of course, works better, and she's presenting her legislative agenda for 2006 in a clearer, more media-friendly fashion. Her press conference about Puget Sound cleanup on Monday, Dec. 20, was a veritable love-in, with Gregoire beaming from the podium and hugging and kissing the other politicians around her.

That press conference also illustrated how Gregoire is framing her approach to government: activist, but not expensive. In November, the federal government designated three families of Puget Sound orcas as endangered species, raising the profile of the Sound's declining health. Gregoire says 38 of the Sound's species are in trouble and that a cleanup partnership with local, state, and federal governments as well as the private sector has to begin. To kick off that effort, she is proposing $42 million in new state spending for the Sound, but she stressed only $500,000 would come from the state's general tax fund. Most of the work would be paid for with existing revenue from taxes on oil and toxic chemicals. Even $42 million, however, is just a fraction of what is needed.

On Monday, Dec. 12, Gregoire appeared at Seattle's Wing Luke Elementary School—soften that image!—to promote her early-childhood education initiative. She is creating a new Cabinet level agency to promote early learning. Again, the initial cost is cheap to the state's taxpayers, $1.5 million, but the goal is ambitious and clearly aimed at the voters' kitchen table: to encourage the idea of public education before kindergarten. The governor has not addressed how that would be paid for in the long run.

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, Gregoire was in Yakima pushing her goal of energy independence. She has worked hard to promote ideas that could benefit both sides of the Cascade curtain. This year, she is lobbying hard for a small, one-time $18 million investment in equipment that will make it more viable for farmers to grow oil-seed crops for biodiesel production. Republicans, Democrats, farmers, and greens all love the idea (see "Clean Energy Frenzy," Dec. 14, 2005). Again, some agricultural specialists believe the state's limited help will be insufficient to create viable oil-crop farming in Washington.

The most important goal for Gregoire during this year's legislative session, however, is exercising some degree of fiscal restraint. She hopes to keep much of the state's projected $1.4 billion surplus in reserve. She has proposed around $500 million in new spending in a supplemental budget that will augment the $26 billion biennial budget passed last year. Most of the new spending is going for increased caseloads in social services, higher health care costs, bigger enrollments in public schools, and voter-approved increases in teacher pay. "We need to pay the bills and save the rest," she says. "The economy in the state is cyclical. You need to exercise fiscal responsibility. We will do some strategic investments, [but] we are holding government accountable for every penny we spend."

State House Speaker Frank Chopp wants this year's supplemental budget to reflect his ongoing "kitchen table" priorities—jobs, health, and education. He likes the economic development aspect of the biodiesel proposals and supports increased spending to give more poor children health insurance, but the most important proposals for him this year are about education. He notes that the Seattle delegation worked very hard and accomplished fantastic things last year with the passage of the $8.5 billion transportation package that was subsequently upheld by the voters with the defeat of Initiative 912 in November. Now he wants the same kind of results on education from preschool through community college. "We have to remember that our primary duty is in education," says Chopp, referring to language in the state constitution. Since this year is a short session, Chopp doesn't have ambitious plans but wants to pass the Gregoire- endorsed $39 million in new spending to help kids pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). Passing the standardized test will be required for high-school graduation beginning in 2008, but students around the state are finding it very difficult (see "The Stress Test," Nov. 23, 2005). "We want to maintain high standards but give students some help," says Chopp.