2004 Washington Freedom Agenda Update

Taxes
The League of Education Voters Foundation is expected to release their P-16 plan on February 5th. No details of the plan are known yet but they have been conducting community meetings to get feedback on a proposal that will “better fund and link early childhood education, K-12, and higher education in the state”. The expected revenue source for the project is an increase in the sales tax totaling one billion dollars in NEW revenue. CSE will oppose this effort to raise taxes as we have done successfully in Alabama and Oregon.

Charter Schools
Thanks to your efforts, on January 29th, the House Education Committee passed the 2004 charter school bill (HB2995) on a 7-4 vote. Voting YES on final passage were all seven PRO-charter Committee members:

Chairman Dave Quall (D-40)
Rep. Phil Rockefeller (D-23)
Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48)
Rep. Gigi Talcott (R28)
Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-5)
Rep. Rodney Tom (R-48)
Rep. Lois McMahan (R-26)

The best news is that a charter school bill has been passed out of committee prior to the February 6th cut off date. The bad news is that the bill was weakened by amendment in order to get it out of the committee. There are still several opportunities to strengthen the bill. It is important to let your elected officials know that you support real school choice.

Liability Reform
The legislative strategy has changed on this issue since the last update. The Senate intends to pass last year’s tort reform bill – SB 5728 – again this session. This is good news although it comes with its shortcomings and challenges. SB 5728 is a comprehensive liability reform bill but lacks several reforms that were in SB 6520 in the areas of construction, pharmaceuticals, and obesity. Those individual bills will be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday, February 6.

For the latest strategy and scheduling of bills, please visit the Liability Reform Coalition website at www.walrc.org.

Your Senators and Representatives need to hear that this is an important issue to you. We have mailed over 50 packets of tort reform information to our members around the state and have more available. If you would like to receive one, please contact me at jdaniels@cse.org.

All legislators can be reached through the hotline at 1.800.562.6000 or by logging onto www.leg.wa.gov. Individual phone numbers and mailing addresses are available through this website also. Remember to identify yourself as a member of CSE!