OLYMPIA — From the beginning of this regular session, Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, wasn’t sure lawmakers in Olympia would be able to pass a budget in the 105 days allotted by law.
“With this amount of money to cut, when we cut an equal amount in the budget before that . . . These are tough decisions,” Dunshee said this week. “Once you’ve even figured out what is the best course, you still have to give pain to a bunch of people, and that is a tough thing to do.”
It has become abundantly clear that lawmakers will need a special session to finish negotiations on a state budget that will cut nearly $5 billion. The official end of the 105-day session is Easter Sunday, but many here have marked Friday the last day.
Gov. Chris Gregoire was scheduled to meet with legislative leaders Thursday to decide when to call them back. She was expected to reveal her decision Friday.
Legislators simply ran out of time crafting a budget amid falling revenue from tax collections, hard-to-swallow cuts, a gaping deficit in the current fiscal year, and changing political dynamics in both chambers.
And the session already started in a somewhat unusual frenzy.
Lawmakers had to close about half of a $1 billion deficit in the 2009-2011 budget — a shortfall that had forced them to go into a special session last December when they did not trim enough. Budget writers in the Senate and the House spent the first month or so preparing supplemental budgets.
The Legislature also passed a major policy bill early on, halting rate hikes on unemployment taxes for businesses, a measure that drew an intense political fight from organized labor and business lobbying groups. In the end, unemployment benefits were bumped up.
“When we got here, we spent the first three weeks probably working on a supplemental budget for the current biennium when that’s time we could have spent writing a biennial budget. But we had to fix the budget we were already in,” said Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, a deputy majority leader. “Everything was just delayed.”
Then in March, state chief economist Arun Raha told lawmakers to expect about $800 million less in the next two years.
State officials say Washington needs about $37 billion to keep its current programs, responsibilities and maintenance, among other expenses for the next two years. But Raha said the projected revenue for that time will be $32 billion.
The spending estimate, however, includes two initiatives that lawmakers can easily not fund and have not in recent years.
Last November, Republicans made some gains in both chambers of the Legislature. They were not enough to topple the Democrat majority in both chambers, but Republicans, along with a group of moderate and conservative Democrats, have yielded their influence in the Senate.
The most obvious examples were the proposed 2011-2013 budgets, which cut state spending. The Senate plan slashes $4.8 billion, while the House’s cuts hover around $4.4 billion.
Along with negotiations, the Legislature also needs to approve about 50 bills that are policy changes necessary to implement the budget.
Still, Republicans say Democratic leadership was aware of the serious fiscal issues before the session started.
“It wasn’t a surprise that we had to do a budget,” said Sen. Janea Holmquist-Newbry, R-Moses Lake.
On Friday, Gregoire will decide when to call lawmakers back. The Senate has been lobbying to start the special session next Tuesday, while the House wants some down time for negotiations.
Gregoire wants legislative leaders to narrow the special session agenda to the budget, and other big policy issues, like reform to the workers compensation system.
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