WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

The end of the 2014 legislative session

Dear friends and neighbors,

What a tragic start to the morning! As we all watch the news unfold on the Seattle Center helicopter crash, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and colleagues of the victims.

I also want to share with you the results of the 2014 legislative session. Last Thursday, we finished just minutes before the deadline – the first year we’ve ended on time since 2008! I am thrilled that we finally passed the DREAM Act this session and funded it with $5 million. This will give hope and equal access to opportunity for all our students who graduate from high school and pursue college dreams at our public higher education institutions.

We kept up the urgency to make health care accessible to everyone during our transition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Our budget increased funding for mental health, developmentally disabled, and educational programs for health practitioners.

We also restored more funding to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to help families stay together who are one health crisis away from homelessness.

Once again, we kept fighting to honor our commitment to teachers in K-12 and community colleges, but we again failed to fund cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for our teachers.

All of us know inflation has hit our household budgets, whether it’s the price of food or the cost of our electricity and water and sewer bills. We cannot keep funding students and schools under the McCleary decision while abandoning the teachers who provide that education. I’ll come back fighting in 2015.

 Spring has arrived in Olympia!
Spring has arrived in Olympia!

The state’s most effective public funding program to support health sciences and biotech research – the Life Sciences Discovery Fund – was a victim of budget negotiations in the final hours. This is just a terrible way to balance a budget.

These research grants fund hundreds of student jobs and research leaders throughout the state. They fund the future STEM teachers and the people who study children’s brains and how they learn.

These researchers discover cures to cancer and HIV/AIDS, and are recruiting the world’s top scientists and engineers to our state. I have joined with other House and Senate legislators to ask the Governor to restore this research grant program. I am determined to save the jobs of our state’s future innovators and teachers.

As my parents used to say whenever us kids had a setback, “Don’t just sit there and complain – get back in there and do the work.” A budget gets written and then we find out what’s working and what needs to be changed in the next round.

This budget brings some hope and comfort to the most vulnerable among us. It shows our young people that we believe in them and want them to dream big. And the disappointments? There’s work we have to do, and that’s something all of us can understand.

Thank you all for participating in the extraordinary work of governing. Our democracy depends on our willingness to be part of the system that serves us.

 

Your voice in Olympia,

Gael