With a politically divided House and dual speakers, the 1999 state legislature adjourned on April 27 after 105 days of deliberations. Though locked in combat throughout most of the session, the lawmakers were finally able to adopt the state's biennial budget and agree on passage of educational initiatives.

Passage of HB 1674 by the House is indicative of the public unrest over the quality of the public schools, however the bill was never brought to a vote in the Senate. It would have created and defined a Certificate of Mastery to be taken in the tenth grade as a prerequisite to graduation from high school, beginning with students graduating in the year 2008.

With testing and performance standards already in place, the special session delivered on accountability, creating an oversight commission, setting state standards, and providing intervention for struggling districts (SB 5418). A voucher system which would allow students to choose between the public school system or be subsidized to the same level in the private schools continues to get attention.

Power struggles among the House and Senate Transportation Committee chairs and committee members continued from the regular session and focused on dismantling the 52-year-old Legislative Transportation Committee (LTC). It meets monthly between sessions on transportation matters. This became a major disagreement, stalling passage of the $4 billion state transportation budget. Eventually a compromise was reached by appropriating the Senate's share of the $2 million LTC Budget to the Senate Transportation Committee, chaired by Mary Margaret Haugen, 10th District Democrat from the Island Skagit/Snohomish area. The balance will go the LTC chaired by House Transportation Committee co-chairs Karen Schmidt, Republican, 23rd District, Kitsap County, and Ruth Fisher, Democrat, 27th District, Tacoma/Fife.

With that controversy over, the record-breaking $4 billion state transportation biennial budget was adopted. It included $625 million new funds from the $2.4 billion statewide Referendum 49, approved by the voters in November, 1998. Over 90% of this money will be spent for constructing state highway projects. Alternatives to urban highway projects to provide more travel choices such as regional rail or bus transit systems received no funding and neither did pedestrian and bicycle projects. Funding was included for passenger ferries and a second daily inter-city rail round trip between Vancouver, B.C. and Seattle.

Earlier this year, the Municipal League Foundation, the educational arm of the Municipal League of King County, conducted a study of the budgets of five public jurisdictions: the cities of Bellevue, Federal Way, and Seattle, the Port of Seattle, and Sound Transit. Two versions of "Good Budgets" are available at the League office. The summary version is available upon request by League members, and the detailed version that contains methodology is available at a nominal fee. Please call 206-622-8333 to request your copy.

On November 3, 1998, the voters of Seattle overwhelmingly approved a bond measure for $196,400,000 to pay for the cost of designing, constructing, acquiring, improving, renovating, and equipping neighborhood and Central Library facilities. The Libraries for All plan, upon which the bond measure was based, was the product of more than a decade of planning, the most recent phase of which saw Library leaders attending dozens and dozens of community and neighborhood meetings all over the city to receive input on citizens1 dreams and desires for their libraries.

The huge bond issue, the largest ever for a public library system in the United States, will fund the replacement of the overcrowded and seismically unsound Central Library with a larger facility on the site of the present Central Library. During construction, collections and services now housed in the Central Library will be provided in an interim site downtown, not yet determined. After an exhaustive and highly public selection process, the Library has announced that Rem Koolhaas, internationally acclaimed Dutch architect, will design the new Central Library facility. In addition, all 22 of the existing neighborhood branches will be upgraded, expanded or replaced, and new branches will be added in Deiridge, Northgate, and the International District. Finally, the bond issue includes a $6 million Opportunity Fund to address new or unanticipated neighborhood library capital needs not addressed by Libraries for All. In addition to the bond funds, the Library Foundation has pledged to raise $40 million in private funds, and the Gates Foundation has contributed $20 million to be used for neighborhood branch improvements.

The Library Board is legally charged with the implementation of this vast, nine-year undertaking. Assisting it in providing oversight are two bodies. The Oversight Committee is made up of two city council members, two library trustees, the City's Finance Director, and four citizens appointed by the Mayor; its primary function is to monitor the expenditure of the bond proceeds. The Citizen Implementation Review Panel is made up of 15 citizens, seven appointed by the City Neighborhood Council, seven by the Library Board, and one by the other 14 members; it provides financial oversight, advises on Opportunity Fund allocations and on the use of architecture to achieve construction and maintenance efficiencies, acts as a sounding board for community opinion, and provides constructive criticism on all aspects of implementation.

Few current issues capture and arouse the public's interest and frustration as much as the problems faced every day in moving around the Puget Sound region. Options for solving transportation problems are being addressed at every level of government, and are prompting debate in the private sector as well. The Municipal League Foundation is gathering information about transportation plans currently being considered and implemented, who's doing what, and how long it will take.

Members of the League have an opportunity to help select the areas of special concern that should be addressed. Do the problems involved with Sound Transit-Light Rail, Commuter Transit and Express buses have a high priority? Are the monorail and ferry system of great concern? How about local bus service-Metro Transit and other systems? Is there greater concern about local streets/ potholes and neighborhood traffic? Are there innovative funding proposals? Should the governance of transportation systems be changed, such as in Vancouver, Atlanta or Portland, for example?

The Municipal League has had a long history of interest in campaign reform. As a member of the Coalition for Open Government it was involved in drafting, collecting signatures for, and, in 1972, passing Initiative 276. The resulting Public Disclosure Law established a commission to collect and oversee the required disclosure of campaign finances.

In other special session business, the 1999 Forests and Fish Act was passed to improve forest practices for the purpose of protecting salmon habitat as mandated by the federal Endangered Species Act.

The new Act includes 1) expanded buffer zones along the 60,000 miles of salmon streams within 8 million acres of forestland, and 2) authorization of tax credits for timber landowners or direct payments to small forest owners to stop tree cutting near streams, and provision of regulatory predictability for timber owners for the next 50 years.

Another part of the Act creates a Salmon Recovery Funding Board and provides $119 million to pay for habitat restoration projects. The Board will consist of five voting members - the Governor's representative and four citizens appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate - and five non-voting members from state natural resource and transportation agencies. The legislation also sets guidelines for distributing some of the state salmon recovery monies to cities, counties and non-profit groups.

The special session ended on May 19, 1999. Governor Locke intended to call an additional one-day special session before the June 30 deadline for the purpose of passing extended unemployment and training benefits for aerospace, forest, and fishing industry workers, but was unable to reach the legislative agreement necessary to call it. Authorization for state benefit programs ended on June 30, the end of the state's fiscal year.

King County is currently addressing two high-profile issues: salmon recovery and sewage disposal. A program to ensure the preservation of our native salmon population is moving ahead in conjunction with Snohomish and Pierce counties. County Executives Bob Drewel (Snohomish), Ron Sims (King) and Doug Sutherland (Pierce) are showing exceptional leadership in reacting to the designation of the Chinook Salmon as an endangered species, and in refusing to sit back and let the federal governrnent dictate solutions.

Secondly, King County-Metro has recognized that the county must start now on the planning and construction of a third major sewage disposal plant. The West Point plant and the Renton plant will soon reach capacity. The siting of the new plant, possibly in north King County, is currently under discussion and review

An additional issue, congestion management, or what we citizens call "traffic gridlock," is the top concern of the county's Transportation Department. And since major growth continues to take place in the unincorporated areas of King County, affordable housing (including rental units) continues to be a major issue for county government.

The City of Seattle faces the constant challenge of how to support worthwhile projects in an atmosphere of ever tightening budgets. As resources from federal and state governments continue to decline, local communities increasingly seek innovative ways to accomplish projects for the public good. Carefully structured public-private partnerships represent one way that community objectives can be achieved.

In November 1998, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell and City Council President Sue Donaldson appointed a citizen task force to develop a set of standards for future public-private partnerships between the City of Seattle and private entities. The 18-member task force has since researched protocols of standards used by other municipalities, and gathered information from City staff~ private sector representatives, and public interest panelists. The mission of the task force is to ensure that future partnerships are structured to clearly meet public objectives.

A key challenge is assuring an open process in which the public is informed and has opportunity to raise questions, while keeping worthy projects on track, on time and beneficial to all parties. The group is currently modifying a typology of standards drafted by project facilitator David Harrison, Director of Northwest Forum; it is expected that task force recommendations will be ready by late summer for presentation to the Mayor and Council.

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