It is now a couple of weeks since the end of the 2014 legislative session, and I look back on the flurried and brief 60 days with mixed feelings. There are many bills, small and great, that I am proud passed. Possibly none more important than the Dream Act, which ensures all hard-working Washington students can apply for the State Need Grant, regardless of where they were born.
On Monday a 30-day special session of the Washington State Legislature will commence, as the state faces a $2.2 billion shortfall in revenue for the 2011-2013 budget.
For over a decade the battle to protect Maury Island has waged and, as The Beachcomber so correctly stated in last week’s edition, “what a difference a year makes” — or perhaps we could say what a difference a decade makes.
As we prepare for the 2010 legislative session, the deep recession we entered in 2008 continues to cloud the futures of many families as well as the state’s budget forecasts.
The fight to protect Maury Island from Glacier Northwest’s efforts to construct a massive barge loading facility in publicly owned tidelands and enormously expand a gravel mine to within 15 feet of the Islands’ sole-source aquifer started more than a decade ago.
When lawmakers came to Olympia on Jan. 12, we all knew that the national recession, which is now a global recession, was hurting the state of Washington. By March, the revenue forecasts for the state had further deteriorated, and we faced a $9 billion revenue shortfall. Washington was not alone: 40 other states faced enormous budget gaps with a cumulative hole of $281 billion.
