“While the economy and the resulting budget situation dominate the headlines, we also focused on the longer-term needs of our state,” said House Speaker Frank Chopp. “We spent last summer and fall building an agenda to address issues families talk about around their kitchen tables – decent-paying jobs, good schools, safe communities. We made real progress on all those fronts while continuing to find ways to trim the budget and reform the way government works.”
“We tried to meet the real needs of real people,” said Majority Leader Lynn Kessler. “Naturally, we concentrated on the budget, but we also wanted to make sure our businesses – and our people – are well-positioned to take advantage of the new jobs that will be available as we come out of this Great Recession.”
Key bills approved during the 2010 session include:
Balancing the budget
- Reduced agency spending.
- Suspended performance bonuses and salary increases for many state employees.
- Extended the ban on hiring, travel, contracting, and purchases.
- JOBS Act of 2010 will, if approved by voters, create at least 38,000 jobs around the state while making our public schools safer, healthier, and more energy efficient.
- Washington Works Housing Act will put an additional 10,000 construction workers back to work building affordable housing so people like nurses, police officers, and teachers can live closer to their jobs.
- Continued to provide incentives for industries to locate and grow in Washington, from an extension of the rural tax credit for creating jobs in areas hardest hit by unemployment to a new exemption for high-tech companies who build the next generation of data centers in our state.
- We took next step in reforming K-12 funding by setting in motion the first recommendations from the Quality Education Council, the group tasked with implementing HB 2261.
- Restored, protected, and enhanced local levy funding by allowing school districts to calculate their levies to funding levels that existed prior to 2009 when the legislature was forced to cut education budgets.
- Approved new strategies for turning around low-performing schools and a new evaluation system for teachers and principals designed to position Washington schools to succeed in the federal Race to the Top.
- Provided help for thousands of low-income students to pay for college with some of the most generous financial aid programs in the nation, making Washington a leader in student access and affordability.
- Gave assistance to community and technical colleges to help thousands of unemployed workers seeking to retrain and retool for jobs in emerging industries.
- Gave voters the opportunity to amend the state constitution so that judges may consider withholding bail on anyone charged with a crime punishable by the possibility of life in prison, thereby restricting release on the toughest, most dangerous criminals.
- Required that a bail may only be granted by a judge for a person arrested and detained for a felony offense, and does away with the “booking bail” schedule.
- Exempted the photographs and birth date information in personnel files of criminal justice employees from disclosure under the Public Records Act, except for media requests. This protects law enforcement officers and their families from threats by inmates.
Reforming government
- Transformed the way we fund our public schools, simplifying the current complicated budgeting process and increasing transparency.
- Reformed the way safety net services are delivered with the Disability Lifeline, which stresses quicker transitions to self-sufficiency and better utilizations of state and federal dollars.
- Redesigned the delivery of temporary assistance to needy families with services that will help recipients getting back on their feet more quickly.
- Eliminated, consolidated and/or streamlined numerous boards, commissions, and agency functions.
- Improved Washington State Ferries operations by eliminating inefficiencies and changing the way labor contracts are negotiated.
