From the Director: Legislature to Convene—Quiet Session Expected

On Monday, January 9, the Legislature will reconvene to begin the short 60-day session.

When they return to Olympia, legislators will encounter markedly different conditions than they have in the past several years. The state now has a $1.4 billion surplus and no major issues (such as transportation funding and the biennial budget) that have to be addressed. So, what should we expect of the Legislature in 2006?

A “Cautious” Session

Early indications are that the 2006 legislative session will be a fine-tuning session. Both political parties are looking to enhance their standing, which translates to avoiding controversial and politically-charged issues. We anticipate that the republicans and the democrats will be “positioning” throughout the session and will avoid tough votes. Most controversial legislation will not see the light of day.

I expect legislators will address a number of minor issues, and perhaps some agreed-upon major issues. From the standpoint of cities, this may be good. Hopefully, harmful legislation will be derailed before it gets to the hearings stage and we can focus our energies on beneficial measures.

Big Picture Issues

In the big picture arena, I expect that the Legislature will approve a supplemental budget that addresses caseload and enrollment increases, state firefighting obligations, pension funding adjustments, and a number of other fiscal issues. While an increase in pension contribution rates will impact cities, we’re hopeful that the impact can be minimized.

Early signs are that Governor Gregoire intends to preserve as much of the $1.4 billion surplus as possible. We expect her to propose a number of changes to the Growth Management Act. We also expect the Legislature to take up the streamlined sales tax issue (discussed below).

All in all, we expect limited activity on consequential city issues this session, but hope to advance a number of positive second-tier measures.

Streamlined Sales Tax

The Governor will advance SST legislation in an attempt to bring the state in compliance with the national agreement. This highly-contentious issue has been before the Legislature the past several years, but failed due to lack of agreement on how to address negatively impacted cities.

If adopted, the streamlined sales tax proposal would shift from origin to destination the apportionment of local sales taxes on goods shipped from one jurisdiction to a recipient in another jurisdiction. This bill would create consistency with proposed national sales tax apportionment standards intended to provide fairness to mainstreet businesses and to convince Congress to require out-of-state vendors to collect and apportion state and local sales taxes on internet and catalogue sales.

The Association has worked with representatives of both the negatively- and positively-impacted cities and an agreement has been reached. That agreement assumes that the Legislature will appropriate funding to defray the losses to the negatively-impacted cities. We will seek and are hopeful we can secure passage of SST legislation in 2006 with full mitigation. Please see the Municipal Finance section for an outline on how you can help.

City Legislative Action Conference

On January 25 and 26, the Association will host its City Legislative Action Conference (CLAC) in Olympia. This annual “call to arms” has grown to more than 400 city officials, and is intended to communicate city issues to members of the Legislature.

This extremely-successful event serves to remind legislators that they have a responsibility to accommodate city interests, and allows cities to be partners with the state in addressing the needs of their joint constituencies. City officials are strongly encouraged to attend and be part of the city lobbying effort.

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