As the Legislative session is winding down, 36th District Representative Reuven Carlyle sends these notes from Olympia.
The fast-paced, 60-day state legislative session is slated to end on March 11 and our final days in Olympia are filled with late nights and intense budget negotiations. As we strive to wrap up the people’s business, I wanted to take a moment to provide a high level overview of some of my projects as your representative in the Legislature.
A new independent report says Washington is expected to lead the nation in job growth this year. It’s a great start to economic recovery, but we have a long journey ahead. The heart and soul of our job growth, as always, is small business.
We face a projected $2.7 billion budget deficit following a $9 billion deficit last year. This is from a total of about $34 billion. The Great Recession has caused a dramatic drop off in tax revenues while demand for public services in education, health care, foster care, prisons and much more have increased substantially. It’s a perfect storm requiring courageous honesty about the deeper, more substantive public policy challenges we face.
A vast majority of our work in these final days has focused on balancing the budget in a thoughtful, equitable and economically efficient manner.
Here are some of my personal priorities this year.
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