House Democrats trim construction budget
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:27 AM PST
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleOLYMPIA -- The House Democrats' proposed construction budget trims $47 million from Gov. Gary Locke's proposal, mostly by dropping a proposed new prison. The Senate version of the budget is expected to delete the prison as well.
Locke had asked for $46 million to accelerate expansion of the Coyote Ridge prison at Connell in Benton County.
But House Capital Budget Chairman Hans Dunshee and other lawmakers balked, opting to push for sentencing changes and drug treatment programs aimed at controlling the growth of prison populations.
"We really have got to slow down this 'two-bit druggie in a big box' kind of thing," Dunshee, D-Snohomish, said Tuesday. "You can't just keep building this stuff or you're going to be building more prisons than you are schools."
Locke's budget chief, Marty Brown, said his office is studying whether there will be room under the state's debt limit to build the prison in the 2005-2007 budget cycle.
"It may end up being penny-wise and pound-foolish not to do it this year," Brown said, expressing concern that there has been little action on ideas to reduce the prison population.
"We still have too many people in prison," Brown said. "I'd hate to have the federal courts running the prison system."
A sweeping change in sentencing is unlikely in an election year because it would put thousands of convicted criminals back on the street.
Meanwhile, longer sentences are crowding Washington's prisons so badly that the state is shipping inmates to other states. The Department of Corrections figures the prison population will grow by more than 900 inmates by the next fiscal year.
Dunshee's proposed construction budget -- a midcourse revision of the larger two-year spending plan passed last year -- spends $127 million from the proceeds of state bonds, compared to $174 million envisioned by Locke's plan.
By trimming Locke's proposal, the House could avoid authorizing more bonds, which is undesirable for several reasons. First, it would add to the state's debt load, which sticks future lawmakers with more debt and less money to spend on their own projects. Second, it would require another supermajority vote in the Legislature to issue bonds.
Putting the state in debt takes a 60 percent vote in both the House and Senate, a requirement that tends to drive up spending because lawmakers demand projects in return for their votes.
But even the smaller version of the construction budget isn't winning over fiscal conservatives.
"I don't see any emergencies in this budget," said Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, the ranking Republican on Dunshee's committee. "It's got its share of local projects. It's not smaller in the higher education area."
Colleges and universities typically get the majority of the construction budget, and Dunshee's plan is actually slightly larger than Locke's in that area -- about $103 million in bonds.
However, in an unusual move, he shifted roughly $18 million from the University of Washington to Washington State University. Most of that money would help plow $31.6 million into WSU's Riverpoint academic building in Spokane.
Dunshee said he delayed several projects at four-year colleges because he wanted them to go through a new ranking system mandated by the Legislature last year. Instead, his plan would spend more on community and technical college projects -- which already go through a similar ranking system.
A hearing on the House proposal was scheduled in the Capital Budget Committee on Wednesday. The full House could vote on it late this week. A competing plan from the Republican-controlled Senate is expected within a few days.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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