Meeting the needs of Washington families
Every legislative session gives us an opportunity to make investments that address the emergent needs of Washington families. The expectation from constituents is to take care of business. To solve problems.
Last week, House Democrats passed a supplemental budget that addresses four areas of great concern for our state. A teacher shortage crises, 35,000 homeless kids, record wildfire costs, and mental healthcare shortages.
As we enter budget negotiations these are some of the items House Democrats are fighting for:
- Helping the homeless, especially kids and families – There are more than 35,500 homeless students in Washington. This is a moral tragedy. Our proposal makes a number of investments in critical services to reduce homelessness, including services specifically intended for homeless students and their families.
- Improving lives for foster children – All of Washington’s children deserve an opportunity to succeed. We’re investing in resources to improve the lives of foster kids by increasing the number of foster families in Washington.
- Continuing to fix mental health care – We must make improvements to get our loved ones the care they need. This proposal will help us provide higher quality care with additional hospital staff and create safer environments for both patients and staff.
Progress on education funding
We have a moral and constitutional duty to one million school kids in Washington. It is our state’s paramount duty. Time and again, House Democrats have led the progress on education with policies like expanding all-day kindergarten and reducing K-3 class sizes.
Part of fully funding education is tackling the teacher shortage crisis facing the state. We need to attract, train and retain new teachers to educate our kids and keep our promise to fully fund education by ensuring there is a quality teacher in every classroom.
The House Democratic budget proposal will help do that by:
- Increasing beginning teacher salaries –This investment will set the beginning teacher salary at $40,000, making it easier to attract new teachers.
- Supporting classified staff and paraeducators –. This budget proposal will fund retention of quality staff throughout the school and provide professional development for paraeducators, important school employees who work with students with developmental or physical disabilities.
- Supporting beginning teachers – Programs to support educators in the beginning of their careers helps them improveand gives them the tools for success. This proposal invests in early career teachers so they can have long, successful careers in the field.
Paying to recruit and retain quality teachers
We often hear politicians saying they want to improve education, but these promises fall flat when it comes to actually paying for it.
Washington state has fallen behind in teacher pay.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The House Democratic budget proposal pays for more quality teachers in classrooms across the state by closing or narrowing just six tax breaks that have been used to benefit companies like big, international investment firms and out-of-state drug wholesalers.
Most of these tax breaks are ones we have proposed closing before. They are just six of the nearly 700 tax breaks on the books, many of which are outdated and no longer benefit the industries they were intended for.
One of these tax breaks excuses banks from paying certain taxes when they foreclose on a family’s home. Another gives a preferential business tax rate to investment brokers, while small business owners pay their taxes and follow the rules.
Corporations shouldn’t be able to take advantage of tax breaks that don’t benefit our state while kids are waiting to get the education they deserve.
If you want more details about our plan to recruit and retain quality teachers, or specifics about the tax breaks we want to close, you can read more here.
New law fights opioid addiction
Snohomish County is facing an epidemic of drug overdoses. Of approximately 300 deaths per year due to unintentional injury, 44 percent were due to prescription opioid drugs (particularly oxycodone and hydrocodone) and heroin.
In my January 19 e-newsletter I wrote about a bill to make opioid prescriptions safer by helping to prevent addiction. There’s good news, that measure, House Bill 2730, passed the Senate last night on an almost unanimous vote and is headed to the governor for his signature.
The bill expands access to the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), an online system managed by the Department of Health, to keep track of the number and type of prescriptions dispensed in Washington.
The information in this system is accessible to medical practitioners, who can use it to watch for signs of abuse by their patients, like shopping around for the same prescriptions from multiple providers.
But because the registration process for prescribers is lengthy, only 30 percent of Washington residents with prescriptions are actively using it.
The new law will allow healthcare facilities to sign up as entities so that the prescribers employed there can use the system without each of them having to go through the registration process separately. This change will make it easier for Washington prescribers to access useful data on opioid prescriptions.
Thanks for reading my e-newsletter and getting involved in your democracy. As always, feel free to contact my office with your comments and ideas.
Sincerely,
