Once in session starting Jan. 10, state lawmakers will spend the next four months in Olympia talking about priorities for how to spend the state’s scarce dollars.
And the public is going to feel the weight of those choices, perhaps like never before.
“The choices are very limited,” said state Rep. Marcie Maxwell of Renton, who has easily won her second term representing the 41st District in the House of Representatives.
“People in our local communities are going to feel those cuts in important services that are vital to their lives,” she said in an interview.
Maxwell’s work as a state legislator never really stops, even when the Legislature is not in session. The conversation about how best to serve the public is ongoing.
She meets often with constituents at the Kennydale Starbucks and other coffee shops throughout the sprawling 41st. At about the same time Maxwell was pulling out her money in Kennydale, the barista was rattling off the ingredients of her drink. Maxwell didn’t have to utter a word.
Now, her attention is focused on Olympia, where she’ll work from 6:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. on many nights and even deeper into the early morning hours near session’s end.
Maxwell, a Democrat, easily defeated her opponent, Peter Dunbar, a Mercer Island Libertarian. A key to her success, Maxwell said, is that she’s a “business-friendly Democrat” and a business owner herself, selling residential real estate for more than 20 years.
“I think suburban Democrats fit their districts pretty well,” she said. “We aren’t Seattle Democrats; we are suburban Democrats.”
The state needs to keep its businesses and grow new ones to help schools and communities thrive, she said.
She’s meeting with local city councils, including Renton’s, to talk about their wish lists they’re submitting to the Legislature.
In just one term, Maxwell has become an important voice in the conversations about the future of the state’s education system, including basic education. She’s hoping to remain on her current committees once House committee assignments are made in the next week or so.
Maxwell’s 41st District straddles five cities, Renton, Newcastle, Bellevue, Mercer Island and Issaquah – and five school districts that together embody the racial, economic and academic achievement diversity of the district.
“Me having worked in a school district that is very ethnically and economically diverse is very helpful to all of my districts,” she said. Maxwell served for eight years on the Renton School Board.
She’s pleased to have had the chance to take the lead on education issues.
“That is our state priority by Constitution, but it’s also the future of our communities and our building our workforce and making sure our children have the opportunities that they need.”
But not all the state’s education establishment falls under that constitutional mandate, including the state’s two-year and four-year college system and ready-to-learn programs.
The college system, Maxwell said, is “very important to our economy and it’s very important to our children that they have their 21st century skills.”
Still, the state’s mandated priorities will rule the day.
Besides basic education, those priorities include public safety, the vulnerable, jails and debt.
“They have to be our priorities,” Maxwell said. “That is typically 70 percent of our budget right there.”
Finding the dollars to pay for that 70 percent is the challenge facing the state Legislature.
Voters in the general election sent a message they want services paid for with existing revenue, meaning no new taxes or increases in existing ones.
Those votes, Maxwell said, “are a response to how uneasy people are feeling about the length and depth of this great recession. I certainly don’t blame them for that.” Families have cut their budgets and so has the state, she said.
But the state cuts are not over. There’s talk of a special session to plug a revenue hole in the hundreds of millions of dollars in what remains of the current two-year budget. On top of that, it’s already estimated there’s a $5.7 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget that the Legislature must adopt by the end of April – or go into a special session.
Local communities, she said, are going to feel those cuts more directly.
“We need to understand what we are buying with those dollars,” she said.
For example, some families could lose health coverage under the state’s basic health plan if the minimum qualifying income drops. They would need to find health coverage elsewhere or go to the emergency room for care, a cost that’s passed on to everyone, she said.
Maxwell is both concerned and optimistic about the future.
Those months in Olympia are “going to be very difficult.”
She says she’s always been up to a tough challenge.
“We will work through this one,” she said. “I am there because I care about my communities.”
Legislative committees
Renton is represented by state legislators in key leadership positions who can act as the city’s champion. All are Democrats, who retained control of the state Legislature, despite some Republican inroads in the November general election.
State Rep. Marcie Maxwell, for example, sits on key education committees and on one that plays an important role in the state’s economic development. Maxwell was appointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire to the Quality Education Council that will make key recommendations about education reform.
Another, state Rep. Pat Sullivan of Covington, who represents the 47th Legislative District, is the new House majority leader, the House’s second-ranking position. He sits with Maxwell on the Quality Education Council.
“It’s great for South King County to be on the leadership team,” Sullivan told the Covington Reporter. “Our first job will be the supplemental budget.”
Margarita Prentice of West Hill who has deep ties to Renton will become the next president pro-tempore of the state Senate, where she will preside in the absence of Lt. Gov. Brad Owen. She is stepping down as the chair of the powerful Senate budget committee.
Renton is part of five legislative districts, the 5th, the 11th, the 37th, the 41st and the 47st.
