OLYMPIA – If Washington lawmakers want to tax workers 2 cents an hour to create a paid family leave program, they should let voters give their 2 cents’ worth with a statewide vote, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday.
The proposal to make Washington the second state with a guaranteed paid leave has cleared the state Senate but barely survived a key test in the House on Saturday.
The plan would provide $250 a week for leave from full-time work to care for a newborn or for a sick family member for five weeks, beginning in 2009. It would be financed through a 2-cent-an-hour tax subtracted from workers’ pay.
Gregoire said she endorses the plan if lawmakers will take out automatic increases in payment size and the tax levy, and if the public gets to vote on it.
“I think you’ve got a problem when you have an automatic escalator, both in terms of the payout and the tax,” she told a news conference. “I think those need to come back to the Legislature for approval in the future.”
Critics have said both the tax and the benefit check will soar over time, but sponsors said they only want payments to families to keep up with inflation and that the tax might actually go down to a penny an hour.
On Saturday, the House Appropriations Committee passed the Senate bill out to keep it alive, but stripped out all the details and passed just the bill’s title and intent language.
Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, who is working with Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, on the measure, said Monday that the bill is not dead, and that lawmakers would work to find a compromise on the measure before the session ends April 22.
Supporters have been trying to get paid family leave through the Legislature since 2001. Two years ago it passed the Senate but died in the House. After strongly passing the Senate last month, it again comes down to the House.
Keiser said she was happy that the bill made it out of Appropriations in any form, because it’s never made it that far through the House before.
“We feel like we’ve made a new benchmark here,” she said. “We have a good opportunity because now we have a blank slate.”
Keiser said that while she doesn’t like the idea of a referendum, if they ultimately decide to send it to voters, lawmakers might revisit the idea of making businesses pay into the premium.
Businesses are going to fight the measure “tooth and nail either way,” she said.
“If it’s more important for the voters to have businesses share the costs, we may revisit that issue,” she said.
In an Elway poll last month, 61 percent of people surveyed favored the measure, 70 percent of whom thought the tax should be shared by employers and workers.
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