It's time to take the "stop cuts - find revenue" campaign to your hometown

The Legislature is not doing much in this second week of the emergency special session. Today and Friday, lawmakers will pretty much be on the floor or in caucus. Some important hearings take place this week, but the pace we expected hasn’t materialized.

Legislation has already surfaced on revenue alternative ideas different than the governor’s. Rep. Chris Reykdal will shortly introduce legislation to close some 160 tax breaks and giveaways. Sen. Paull Shin of the 21st District introduced SB 5972 to tie a sales tax increase to the unemployment rate. There’s lots of debate on different revenue ideas and it’s clearly too early to have a fix on what will come out of special session or the regular session starting in January.

At this point, we applaud all efforts to actually debate revenue alternatives to the governor’s all-cuts budget. But it’s way too early to get bogged down in details – because there are no details at this point. But know you are shaping the debate with your longtime efforts to push to close billions in tax giveaways. Remember, the governor actually addressed closing tax breaks in her budget package – something she might not have undertaken had it not been for you. And legislators have the tax giveaways report from the Federation that they got when members visited them in Olympia last week.

Progress to stop the cuts and find revenue to avoid the all-cuts budget is being made. Just not as quickly as most would like.

So it’s time to take the campaign to your hometown – to the legislative districts of lawmakers.

Many of these have already taken place. More are planned. We need to do more.

If you’re interested in doing a local job action in your legislative district, contact April Sims at 1-800-562-6002 or aprils@wfse.org. We can help with logistics, signs, buttons and recruitment.
   
THIS WEEK IN THE LEGISLATURE:

    • On Tuesday, the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee holds a work session on community supervision alternatives – we believe this is the proposal to shift Community Corrections duties to the counties. 10 a.m., Senate Hearing Room 1, Cherberg Building.

    • On Wednesday, the same committee looks at evidence-based options to improve statewide outcomes – a report from the Washington Institute for Public Policy. 1:30 p.m., Senate Hearing Room 1, Cherberg Building.

    • The Senate Ways and Means Committee holds important budget hearings on parts of the all-cuts budget: Tuesday, Dec. 6 on health care, long-term care and developmental disabilities; and Wednesday, Dec. 7, on natural resources and general government. The original Thursday, Dec. 8 on criminal justice has been changed to another topic. We’ll keep you updated. The Ways and Means hearings are all at 3:30 p.m. in Senate Hearing Room 4 in the Cherberg Building.


LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT JOB ACTIONS COMING UP:

Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 3:30pm - 19th Legislative District Job Action In front of WorkSource office, 511 W. Heron, Aberdeen to support jobs package and revenue.

Thursday, Dec. 8 from 4-6pm - 30th Legislative District Job Action
Peaceful picketing in Federal Way on the corner of 348th and Pacific Highway S., near the Chevron station.

Wednesday, Dec. 14 from 11:30am-12:30pm - 44th Legislative District Job Action
Sidewalk at 12906 Bothell-Everett Highway, Everett to call on Sen. Steve Hobbs to stand with the 99%

Thursday, Dec. 15 at 3:30pm -41st Legislative District Job Action
Sign-waving and leafleting at Chase Bank; delegation will then deliver a holiday card to Sen. Steve Litzow’s district office nearby. Meet at Chase Bank, 10550 N.E. 8th St., Bellevue, WA 98004 (corner of Northeast 8th Street and 106th Avenue Northeast).