Blistering session ends with some gains for cities

The most difficult legislative session in recent memory adjourned in the early morning hours today, Monday, April 27, 2009. The poor economy and corresponding impact on the State’s fiscal position dominated the session. It prohibited significant policy advancements and required all parties to focus on their priority needs. Accordingly, AWC began the year with a focus on retaining key existing resources and securing flexibility and efficiency proposals designed to assist cities and towns sustain service delivery levels. We held onto most of our critical operating funds and secured some new tools as outlined below:

• Full mitigation for streamlined sales tax
  $65 million is allocated to fully mitigate the revenue redistribution impacts of the sourcing law changes as a result of streamlined sales tax.
• An additional $10 million for the City-County Assistance Account
  The real estate excise tax that funds this account has fallen significantly. The budget allots an additional $10 million to this account to assist small and low tax-base cities and counties.
• Local sales and use tax and large annexations (ESSB 5321)
  ESSB 5321 extends and modifies the existing sales and use tax credit for cities in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties annexing large areas. The bill extends the credit to 2015 and adds Seattle as an eligible jurisdiction.
• Annexation reform (ESSB 5808)
  Signed into law on April 10, this carefully crafted legislation is the result of years of work in cooperation with representatives of fire districts, fire chiefs and fire fighters. The bill adds a new optional interlocal method of annexation and establishes for every city and town using the property-owner petition method the need to secure agreement from owners of at least 60% of the assessed valuation, reduced from the previous 75% for non-code cities.
• Community revitalization financing (2SSB 5045)
  Participating local governments, such as cities, counties, and port districts, may create "revitalization areas" and use certain tax revenues which increase within the area to finance local public improvements. The following sources of revenues are used for the payment of bonds which are issued to finance improvements: increased local sales/use tax revenues and property tax revenues generated from within the revitalization area; additional funds from other local public sources; and a local sales/use tax that is credited against the state tax. The bill was delivered to the Governor for signature on April 22.

AWC thanks all of you who sent letters and emails and made phone calls to your legislators supporting bills that would benefit cities and towns. Hearing from home does make a difference. If you wish to send a thank you note to the Governor or a particular legislator, please see the attached sample language and format (Word, 26 kb).

The Governor has 5 days to sign or veto a bill once it has been delivered to her office except for those bills delivered to her during the last five days of the session when she has 20 days, not counting Sundays, to take action. For those bills, May 19th is the final day that Governor Gregoire can either sign or veto all or part of the legislation.

Bills that are signed into law generally take effect 90 days after the session adjourns, unless the bill has an emergency clause to start sooner or states that it will have a later effective date. This year the effective date for all bills subject to the 90 day rule is July 26, 2009.

In the rare instance when the Governor does not act on a bill after the allotted number of days, the bill is deemed approved.

The legislature works within the framework of a two-year cycle. The first year of the cycle is the odd year including this year. Bills that moved out of the original committee but did not pass are placed in the Rules Committee of the original house. For example if a Senate bill moved to the House floor calendar but did not pass it would be returned to the Senate Rules Committee and be eligible for action the next session, a special session or the next regular session – 2010.

AWC’s final bulletin summarizing all legislation impacting cities and towns will be completed in early – mid June. We will only distribute electronically unless otherwise requested.

Again, thank you for your help this year. It was a difficult session given the State’s poor fiscal health but we still secured some gains as a result of your work!

[ return to top ] [ next article ]