Office of Governor Gary Locke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - December 15, 1998
Contact:  Governor's Communications Office, 360-902-4136

Locke’s 1999-01 state budget proposal: Building for the future with no new taxes

OLYMPIA – Gov. Gary Locke proposed today a 1999-01 Washington state budget that increases efforts to improve student achievement while observing voter-approved spending limits.

The governor’s budget plan increases state funding for K-12 public schools and state colleges and universities by $516 million in the next biennium, but holds growth of overall state general fund spending to the lowest level in 30 years. It spends $60 million less than the limit set by Initiative 601, retains $522 million in reserve, and does not raise taxes.

Locke’s budget proposal includes funding to hire 1,000 new school teachers and would increase enrollment at the state’s colleges and universities by 10,000 students. It also would maintain affordable health care for working families and launch a statewide salmon recovery effort backed by $201 million in state and federal funding.

"This budget is about setting higher standards for education, and holding people accountable for getting those results," Locke said. "It is about rewarding hard work. It is about investing savings from welfare reform in education. It is about achieving Washington’s promise in the 21st century."

Locke said his budget would:

* Help every child succeed in school by hiring new teachers, raising teacher standards, and rewarding achievement by students, teachers, and schools.

* Expand access to a college education by increasing higher-education enrollments and establish Washington’s Promise Scholarships, which would help students who meet academic standards go to college.

* Maintain affordable health care for working families and improves community safety, tightening supervision of convicted felons after their release from prison.

* Boost rural economies, providing funding for infrastructure, tourism and tax incentives to expand job opportunities, particularly in booming information-technology fields.

* Save salmon through better enforcement of environmental regulations, community-based planning for preservation and restoration of habitat, and combined federal, state and local funding to restore salmon runs.

The governor said welfare reform, tough choices including budget cuts, and the national tobacco settlement were key in shaping a budget proposal that invests in the state’s highest priority – education – while not losing sight of the state’s broad responsibilities to protect public safety, ensure access to affordable health care, and preserve the natural resources.

"To address these needs, we have left no number un-crunched," Locke said. "This is a thoroughly scrubbed budget in which every single tax dollar is deployed to achieve a specific, measurable result."

The governor said the state’s WorkFirst welfare reform effort saved the state $193 million by reducing welfare caseloads, putting people on public assistance to work.

"We’re taking people off welfare and using the savings for education," Locke said. "And when we don’t have to spend more and more on welfare, we are able to fund job training, health care and other services that working families need to establish their economic independence, their freedom from welfare."

The budget proposal contains $161 million in program reductions, including $30 million in inflationary costs, that would be absorbed by agencies.

Without the tobacco settlement, more budget cuts would have been necessary, Locke said. Washington state's share of the settlement in the next biennium will be $323 million. Under the governor’s budget plan, more than $157 million of that amount will go to maintain the Basic Health Plan for working families and expand Medicaid health care for children in low-income households.

Most of the remainder of the tobacco settlement funds is proposed to go to a Tobacco Prevention Trust Fund, which would finance public health programs aimed at smoking cessation and tobacco prevention.

Together, welfare reform, budget cuts and the tobacco settlement would provide $511 million, close to the $530 million in cuts that Locke said last spring might be necessary to fund education priorities.

"Because of our success in welfare reform, tough choices in making budget cuts, and our state attorney general’s hard work in the tobacco settlement, we did not have to cut as deeply as we might have to protect education funding," Locke said.

The governor’s proposed $20.6 billion general-fund budget for the next biennium adds $318 million for K-12 schools, including a general pay increase for teachers.

Locke’s budget plan would use $40 million in state funds to match $40 million in federal funds to hire more teachers. Combined with another $52 million in new state funding for a restructured Learning Assistance Program, there would be enough resources to hire an additional 1,000 elementary school teachers across the state, he said.

Restructuring the learning-assistance program would end the practice of cutting schools’ funding from the program when student test scores go up, the governor said.

"Our efforts to improve student achievement are combined with initiatives to improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms," Locke said.

Prior to admission to teacher training, all applicants would have to pass tests assessing their mastery of basic reading, writing and mathematics skills. Before new teachers are allowed into classrooms, they would have to demonstrate — in another test — their knowledge in effective teaching skills. Within seven years of starting teaching, a teacher is subject to a third test already in place. It qualifies teachers for professional-level certification and the right to remain in the state’s public-school classrooms.

Locke believes accomplished professionals should be rewarded, and proposes recognition pay of $1,000 for teachers who meet professional-level requirements and $3,000 in recognition pay for teachers who achieve National Board Certification.

The governor’s budget proposal would increase state funding to state colleges and universities by $196 million, including a general salary increase for faculty and staff. Enrollment would be increased by nearly 10,000 students, capacity of branch campuses would get a boost, and college courses for credit would be available from the proposed Washington Online College via the Internet.

Locke said he would put before the 1999 legislature a scholarship program that would help young people from low- and middle-income families afford the rising costs of higher education. Starting with this year’s high school class, Washington’s Promise Scholarships would provide a two-year scholarship – a total of $3,000 – for about 7,200 high school students in the next biennium.

Locke said the scholarship program recognizes that a college degree is no longer just part of the "American Dream," but a necessity for young people trying to land a job that pays well. To that end, the governor also is proposing new training programs that would give students from high school to college the skills and knowledge they need to qualify for jobs in the fast-growing, high-technology industry.

The governor is proposing a $201 million plan, including $102 million in state funds and $99 million in requested federal funding, to take important first steps to restore declining wild salmon runs in Washington.

In the next year, more than three-quarters of the state likely will be affected by listings of nearly 20 species of salmon, trout, and steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. The state must develop a salmon-recovery plan acceptable to federal authorities or watch the federal government impose a plan of its own.

"We must retain control of the destiny of our state and its salmon," Locke said. "We do not want to turn this problem over to the ‘other’ Washington. And that’s why we must build on the partnership of state, local, and tribal governments, farmers, fishermen, business groups, and environmentalists to restore our wild salmon runs."

The governor’s transportation plan calls for a six-year investment of $9.2 billion, including $2.2 billion in projects supported by voter approval of Referendum 49.

The voter-approved funds would be used to complete car pool and bus lanes between Everett and Tacoma and target solutions to "choke points" in congested urban corridors. Other investments of Referendum 49 dollars would expand passenger-only ferry service, make passenger-rail improvements, and invest in projects to improve the movement of freight throughout Washington.

Locke said his budget proposal recognizes that salaries of teachers, the state’s higher-education faculty and staff, and state workers need to keep pace with rising costs of living. The governor proposes 2 percent salary increases in each year of the next biennium for those employee groups.

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