After months of debate, the state legislative session has come to a close with legislators agreeing on a budget. Unfortunately, the budget does not end corporate tax breaks. Sadly, the budget relies on massive cuts to education, public health and safety. However, what was most notable was that tens of thousands of people rallied to say that we are fed up with an economy that allows corporations to skip out on billions of dollars of taxes while our communities suffer.
As the ONLY union representing education workers at every level – from infant care to PhD programs – our union played a pivotal role in this year’s budget fights. In all parts of the state, members demanded accountability from legislators, and from corporations, insisting that legislators end corporate tax loopholes and invest in education and our communities.
Due to our hard work, and that of many of our allies around the state, we shifted the debate. Thanks to your postcards, calls, emails and persistence, House bill 2078 to close tax loopholes for Chase Bank and other out of state banks came to a floor vote. A majority of the House voted in favor, but the bill failed to get the 2/3 vote now required by Eyman’s corporation-protecting I-1053. Had this passed, instead of $100 million in tax breaks for Wall Street, we would have $100 million to fund smaller class sizes in elementary schools across the state. The majority vote for this bill was a critical step forward– we now know who stands with children and who stands with the big banks.
We made progress in other key areas:
Early Learning
Child care providers and parents delivered a strong message to our legislators about protecting children. Through these efforts we:
- Won guarantees in the budget that Working Connections eligibility levels, deeply cut in December, will stabilize, and parent authorizations will extend to six months
- Restored seasonal childcare funds, and won a small expansion in ECEAP funding. a program that prepares children for kindergarten
- Passed legislation that reduces unnecessary paperwork on child care licensing, so scarce state dollars can be spent on children, not red tape
- Won a bill to stop unsafe illegal child care
- Protected Apple Health for all Washington children.
Higher education
Though general cuts to the UW will be large, we:
- Fought off the Governor’s attempt to mandate a 3% wage cut on the entire UW system
- Won approval of our five contracts
- Ensured that cuts will be locally bargained
- Won a better system for approval of our contracts that have limited state funds.
K-12 public education
Members’ calls and outreach to legislators made a huge difference in the fight to protect public education including:
- A final K-12 budget which includes about $70 million more than earlier budget proposals
- We retained the right to locally bargain over the impacts of the cuts on our members’ wages or benefits.
Though we had some important policy victories, and made a strong case for protecting education funding, the reality is that these budget cuts undermine our state’s paramount duty to education and we will all feel the impacts of this budget in our communities. There were opportunities to close corporate tax loopholes but a small handful of legislators prevented this critical reform. We have our work cut out for us as we move forward to hold these elected leaders accountable. It’s also time for us to turn our attention to the banks that continue to profit at the expense of our communities. We’ll keep you posted on upcoming opportunities to challenge banks and corporations.
