Happy Fantastic Friday!

This week House Democrats rolled out our three budget proposals (operating, capital and transportation) and revenue plan for the next two years. Our plan strongly reflects our values in making decisions that will leave leave positive impacts for all future generations.

Read more below about our vision for putting people first today, tomorrow and all the years to come.

Making investments in our state and community

Our proposed budget makes investments in critical areas of the state budget such as behavioral health, affordable housing, education, environment, and a new Workforce Education Investment. Learn more about our budget proposal on the House Democrats Facebook page. 

You can read an overview of the entire budget proposal, but I wanted to highlight the following items that many of you have reached out about this session.

Local Projects

• $66 million for additions and renovations for Western Washington University’s Science Building.
• $66.5 million for Western Washington University’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building.
• $1 million to make improvements to downtown Mount Vernon, including funding for the library and parking structure.

Statewide Projects

• $643 million into K-12 public education to fulfill our promise to fund health care coverage for school employees, fund special education, provide levy assistance in low-property value areas, and support student mental health and safety.
• $608 million for the new Workforce Education Investment, which expands the Washington College Grant, prioritizes expansion of career pathways programs to guide students through community and technical colleges, and increases capacity within higher education institutions for high demand fields, like computer science, engineering, nursing, and medicine.
• $206 million for behavioral health to run state hospital operations, expand community behavioral health beds and services, and treatment for substance use disorder.
• $34 million into affordable housing and homelessness for permanent supportive housing, youth homelessness prevention, and the Housing and Essential Needs Program, which helps people with disabilities struggling to find or maintain housing.
• $11 million to eliminate the backlog in testing sexual assault kits, which will help prevent serial sexual predators from re-offending.

In order to fund these needed investments, House Democrats are proposing an Extraordinary Profits Tax from the sale of stocks and bonds and other high valued assets where the profits are over $100,000 for a single filer and $200,000 for joint filers. These are the extraordinarily rich people in our state – only 13,400 tax filers in the state would pay this tax, Also proposed is a Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) that would cut house sales taxes for 82 percent of Washingtonians. Rates would increase for those selling property valued over $1.5 million.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting this proposal that really focuses on investing in our future by asking the wealthiest in our state to chip in just like the rest of us.

Notable Meetings

• Constituents from the Association of General Contractors. We talked about issues that affect their industry.
• Bellingham Chamber of Commerce. We discussed community issues that impact our local businesses and economy.

• Community to Community Development. We chatted about the importance of supporting our H-2A workers, who are an incredible asset to our community. (pictured above)

• Bellingham Technical College students. We talked about making sure students and faculty have the resources to succeed. (pictured above)

• Mount Vernon Mayor, Jill Boudreau, and City Council Members Erin Moberg, Melissa Beaton and Mary Hudson. We talked about improvements to our downtown community, which are being funded in the Capital Budget. (pictured above)

Broadening broadband

Technology surrounds us, yet many people still do not have access to high-speed internet. This lack of access is happening in urban and suburban areas statewide, but it affects rural communities the most.

Quality, high-speed broadband is crucial for students, for access to medical care, and for local economies.

With the House Democratic budget proposal, we are investing $37.6 million into expanding broadband access statewide over the next two years. House Bill 1498 would set up the Statewide Broadband Office (SBO) under the Dept. of Commerce to serve as a centralized hub in developing and implementing statewide broadband access. The SBO would also act as an information clearinghouse for programming across local, state, and federal governments.

We need statewide broadband access to provide equity across the state and ensure:

• All students have the tools to finish assignments
• Companies in urban centers can employ remote workers
• Patients receive the medical care they need
• Farmers and ranchers have access to technology to make their businesses stronger, and
• The economy continues to grow in all corners of Washington

Thank you all for taking to the time to read this week’s Fantastic Friday, and for taking an interest in our progress at the House of Representatives. I will be sending out a Fantastic Friday letter each week throughout the legislative session.

Please feel free to reach out to me using the information below, with any questions, inquiries, or concerns you may have.

I am here for you!

All best wishes,

Rep. Debra Lekanoff