The state ferry system would eliminate wasteful practices, adopt operating efficiencies and bring ferry employees’ compensation in line with other state employees under a package of reforms introduced today by key Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Republicans
State lawmakers today approved several budget bills designed to narrow the state’s $1.1 billion budget gap during an emergency six-hour special session. Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, voted in favor of the bills, saying he supports this first step toward fiscal sustainability.
“This is just a first step,” King said. “The state still has to make more changes if we are to complete the current fiscal year without having a deficit, and even when we close the budget gap for the current biennium, the state will still be facing another multi-billion dollar shortfall going into the 2011-13 biennium. There are some vital structural reform proposals that need to be looked at in January if we’re going to get the state back on the right track.” Continue reading
Today Senate Republican Deputy Floor Leader Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, delivered a letter to Attorney General Rob McKenna in support of his decision to join a bipartisan, nationwide group of attorneys general challenging the constitutionalityof the national health care bill signed into law this week. These senators signed the letter:
| Sen. Randi Becker Sen. Don Benton Sen. Mike Carrell Sen. Jerome Delvin Sen. Mike Hewitt Sen. Janéa Holmquist Sen. Jim Honeyford Sen. Curtis King | Sen. Bob McCaslin Sen. Bob Morton Sen. Cheryl Pflug Sen. Pam Roach Sen. Mark Schoesler Sen. Val Stevens Sen. Dan Swecker Sen. Joseph Zarelli |
“Our caucus has long sought to ensure all Washingtonians have access to high-quality, affordable health care while maintaining our commitments to the vulnerable, working poor and elderly. Over the years we have introduced legislation to accomplish this goal,” the letter stated. Continue reading
Legislation purporting to help child care centers by allowing collective bargaining is likely to have the opposite effect, taking money from centers while raising costs for parents, say Sen. Janéa Holmquist, R-Moses Lake and Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima. They serve on the Senate Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, which heard Senate Bill 5572 today.
If the goal is to increase public subsidies for child care centers and fund a child care wage ladder, you don’t need this bill to accomplish that,” said Holmquist, the committee’s ranking Republican member. “If Democrat supermajorities in the House and Senate all support this idea, what’s stopping them from increasing subsidies and funding the child care wage ladder?” Continue reading
In his first voting session as a lawmaker, Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, joined a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to approve a bill reinstating the state’s 1 percent property tax levy limit.
King and other legislators met in special session today at the Capitol to reenact the tax increase cap created by Initiative 747, which had been overturned by the state Supreme Court on a technicality earlier this month. Continue reading