Friends, my apologies: The week 6 legislative wrap-up and week 7 preview was one of the casualties of my having fallen down on the job – literally. But I am back and all is well because I have a cast on and the snow is finally beginning to melt down here in ‘SnOly’. Week 7 [...]
Legislative Session: Week 5 in Review
February 13, 2011 By
Perhaps in anticipation of the craziness coming in the next couple of weeks, Week 5 turned out to be a relatively quiet one. However, the LEV team was still busy working on our priorities and here were some of the week’s highlights: On Tuesday and Friday, LEV’s legislative director, George Scarola, testified in both the [...]
Legislative Session: Week 4 in Review
February 7, 2011 By
It was a big week for education (cradle to career) at the Legislature this last week with hearings on a wide variety of issues of critical importance. LEV and friends were out in force to share our support, concerns, and opposition on a lot of bills being discussed. Some of the issues we weighed in [...]
Legislative Session: Week 2 in Review
January 21, 2011 By
Week 2 This week was all about the budget, budget, budget. Even after the early action “savings” adopted in the December special session, Washington State still has a huge $500+ million hole in the current fiscal yer (FY11) that has to be dealt with before we can begin addressing the $4.6 billion deficit in the [...]
Legislative Session: Week 1 and counting
January 14, 2011 By
Week 1 And we are off. The Legislative Session began with a gavel bang on Monday and will continue apace until April 24th. On Tuesday, the Governor gave her State of the State which LEV briefly commented on earlier this week. Also on Tuesday the 11th, the House Ways and Means committee took testimony on [...]
Saturday Morning Post: Special session edition
December 11, 2010 By
The dye is cast. Agreement under the dome. It’s Saturday morning. I’d rather be home. The 2nd special session is in motion. HB 3225 lays out the next set of drastic cuts Washington State is making in order to begin to address out $1.1 billion deficit in the current fiscal year, and the $5.5 billion [...]
Buried in Deficits (and Snow)
November 29, 2010 By
The SnOMG last week plus the Thanksgiving Holidays buried us in weather/travel news and likely some family drama, but I wanted to make sure this ‘tidbit’ didn’t stay buried. In response to the news that the state is facing an additional $385 million deficit in the current fiscal year (as detailed in my last post), [...]
Snow day state budget wonkiness
November 22, 2010 By
Education documentary Paramount Duty now in stock
September 16, 2010 By
It’s the year of the education documentary. Waiting for Superman, Teached, the Lottery and First Generation have all raised attention for education. Although our documentary Paramount Duty debuted last year, unfortunately our state’s failure to adequately fund our public schools continues to make the questions addressed in the film pertinent: How does Washington’s education system [...]
The Governor is "Hearing" You. Tonight.
July 19, 2010 By
The last couple of years have been really tough, fiscally speaking. Washington faced an over $11.5 billion deficit during the last two year budget cycle. And after using every federal recovery dollar and fund transfer available, plus raising a small amount revenue – the Legislature still had to make deep cuts in education and social [...]
