Olympia Update

The week of Feb. 19-23 could have been called "budget week," as the Senate held public hearings or approved its version of the three state supplemental budgets (operating, capital, and transportation) that adjust the two-year spending plans passed by the Legislature last spring.

The first to emerge was the capital budget, which was passed by the Senate 49-0 on Feb. 22.

The Senate's capital budget is about priorities over pork. It addresses important needs, including helping communities in Spokane and Pend Oreille counties recover from last summer's devastating wildfires. A couple of years ago, two 9th District communities, Malden, and Pine City, were almost destroyed by wildfires, and the Legislature rallied around those communities. It is good to see this Senate capital budget help those affected by last year's fires.

Another priority that the Senate capital budget does a very good job of addressing is K-12 school construction. In fact, it is the best capital budget for school construction in my 32 years as a state legislator. This budget:

• Includes $121.5 million in total funding for construction, maintenance, and improvement in districts across Washington, especially small and tribal school districts.

• Creates a new funding bucket to support skills-center facilities for career and technical education, with $60 million for this year and the opportunity to create continued and sustainable funding for them going forward.

• Provides a $144 million enhancement to the School Construction Assistance Program (SCAP), including increasing the state cost allocation match from $272 per square foot to $400 per square foot. This funding implements Senate Bill 5789, a bipartisan proposal that would change the SCAP formula so that the state will pay the full sales-and-use tax levied on all costs chargeable to a school-construction project.

• Includes $35 million for the school modernization loan program proposed under a measure I introduced, Senate Bill 5344.

The Senate capital budget does a good job of addressing other needs throughout Washington, with funding for projects related to higher education, public safety, housing, water infrastructure, behavioral health and more. This budget takes a statewide approach, as it well should.

Several projects in the 9th District are funded in the Senate capital budget. They include money for school modernization projects for schools in Pomeroy and several other small communities in the 9th. The Senate capital budget also funds projects located in Clarkston, Davenport and Tekoa, as well as WSU's main campus in Pullman and the EWU campus in Cheney.

As Republican leader on the Senate capital budget, I have attended many meetings the past two months with the Democrat in charge of the Senate capital budget, Issaquah Senator Mark Mullet, and Senate capital budget staff people. Together, we developed this spending plan and decided which of the many projects requested will actually be in the plan.

After the House passes its version of the capital budget, I'll join other budget leaders from both chambers to work out differences and craft a compromise version for the Legislature to approve before session ends on March 7.

Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, has served the 9th District since 1993.