Capital Budget and Hirst Fix Pt 2
I'm Bob Larson. Would a fourth special session give lawmakers the time they need to agree on a Capital Budget? And more importantly for Republicans, will that budget include a permanent fix to the Supreme Court's Hirst ruling?Senator Jim Honeyford says this is an urban versus rural issue ...
JIM HONEYFORD ... "Those people that live in cities, they can hook up and the cities have water rights. They can just turn their tap and have their water, where if you want to build a home in a rural area, you have to have a well and this stops all well construction, or nearly all of it. And some of the projections I've seen that as many as 17,000 jobs statewide to 23 or 24,000 jobs statewide are being lost because they cannot get building permits to build a well and start construction."
Senator Judy Warnick says many Democrats have told them that no bill is better than a good fix for the Hirst bill ...
JUDY WARNICK ... "They've told us that, that many of their stakeholders feel that we should not fix Hirst. There was a quote that this bill would affect a relatively few property owners in the state of Washington. And, if the House Democrat Caucus thinks that it's a relatively few people that are affected, then they don't know what's going on outside of the cities, outside of their districts."
Warnick says folks in the cities need to realize that their water IS rural water too.
Republicans say a two-year Hirst delay offered by House Democrats is no answer, just putting off the inevitable.