At the start of this short legislative session, some sacrifices were made in the name of strategy.
So says Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park, who was moved from ranking chair of the Senate Ways and Means committee back to ranking capital budget lead. The move was made by minority leader Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.
“We made a few re-alignments with the emphasis on having the strongest overall team in place,” Brown said.
Brown placed Seattle Democrat Sen. Margarita Prentice in Fairley’s place on Ways and Means.
“(Prentice) is one of our members with the most seniority. She has worked a lot of key issues,” Brown said.
Brown said she placed Fairley back in the Capital Budget Committee because “the capital budget is a place where working well with the other side of the isle really pays off and Sen. Fairley really is good at that.”
Fairley said she was told the Democrats are going into this session with a new strategy and that she is too bipartisan. Prentice was put in, in order to contrast more with Republicans.
“I have two feelings on this. One, I worked my heart out to get hundreds of millions of dollars for democratic things for my Senators, and I had to work in a bipartisan way to do it, so I can’t stand up and say nasty things about somebody whose given huge concessions,” Fairley said, speaking of Republican Sen. Dino Rossi, who served as chair of Ways and Means with Fairley as ranking chair in the last session. Rossi is now a Republican candidate for governor.
“On the other hand, pointing out that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys is a strategy that does work,” Fairley added. “It does energize your allies, particularly labor. I hope it does because I want us to be back in the majority” after the fall election.
As ranking capital budget lead, Fairley returns to familiar turf. She was chair of capital budget two years ago when Democrats had the majority in the Senate.
“Capital budget is where the money is. No matter how bad things get on the operating side, there’s always money in capital budget,” she said.
While Gov. Gary Locke has proposed a supplemental budget that puts extra funding into four-year colleges and universities, Fairley hopes to swing the focus toward community colleges.
Fairley said she would also like to keep from building a new prison.
“When you build a new prison you have to hire guards, and designate operating money. Incarcerating criminals costs big bucks,” she said. “I don’t want to put money into a new prison, I will try to get (Sen. Mike) Hewitt to go along with that.”
Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, is chair of Capital Budget.
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