Most residents of Washington State have, at some point, heard about the Washington State Supreme Court’s landmark decision on education, the McCleary decision. This decision basically said the Legislature was not fulfilling its legal obligation to fully fund K-12 education, but it was vague on exactly how much additional revenue would be needed to meet that obligation. This decision came after the Federal Way school district lost its case against the state on appeal after the initial ruling was in their favor. At that time, Tom Murphy was the superintendent, and I was present with him when a lawyer from the State’s Attorney General’s office presented his case before the State Supreme Court. I was shocked at the Court’s ruling because, from my perspective, this lawyer did not present any new evidence to justify overturning the ruling, and I even wrote one of the justices on this ruling, which I still do not understand to this very day.
A couple of years ago, several legislators held seven listening meetings throughout the state, including one at the Puget Sound Educational Service District in Renton, Oct. 19, 2015, which Dr. Campbell, Sally McLean, three board members and I attended. The message was clear: Whatever you do, do it now and make it fair … but they never got the message. The Supreme Court has now held the state in contempt, and it must enact a full-funding plan by Sept. 1, 2018, with that plan approved by the end of this year’s legislative session.
Gov. Jay Inslee, with backing by the new state School Superintendent Chris Reykdahl, has proposed a plan for raising $4.4 billion in taxes over the next two years that includes: (1) increasing the B&O tax from 1.5 to 2.5 percent on professional services, raising $2.3 billion; (2) a $25-per-ton tax on carbon emissions (died in the legislature in 2015 and rejected by voters in 2016), which would raise $2 billion of which $1 billion would go to education; (3) a 7.9 percent capital gains tax on earnings over $25,000/$50,000 for single/joint filers starting in 2019, raising $821 million; and (4) rolling back tax exemptions including bottled water and another affecting refineries. Most of these new tax ideas were brought up at the Renton listening meeting during the public testimony.
According to the plan, $2.75 billion of the tax increase would cover teacher salaries (new teacher’s salary would increase from $35,700 to $54,587 over two years), more positions for school nurses and counselors and more funding to recruit and retain better teachers. Unlike the levy swap, where local levies would be eliminated and the state would (supposedly) more fairly distribute the levy dollars among the state’s school districts, the governor’s plan ignores that issue and reduces our local levy by only $5.5 million. The Republicans (predictably) have criticized the governor’s plan as the largest tax increase in the state’s history. The ball is now in their court, and with our two houses divided, what new tax plan will they come up with to fund the McCleary decision, and how long will it take them to do it? That is the $64,000 question everyone is asking.
Gary Robertson, Federal Way
