11/20/06 Senator says WSU request top ag priority

Washington Ag November 20, 2006 Republican State Senator Mark Schoesler thinks the top priority for agriculture in the upcoming 2007 legislative session is Washington State University's 10.8 million dollar Unified Agriculture Initiative. Schoesler told a Spokane Ag Bureau breakfast Friday that with growing state revenues it should be easy to balance a budget for the next biennium with money left over for some new initiatives. As for WSU's request; Schoesler; "This initiative is to put back a lot of the positions we used to fill in WSU. And we are not talking about new, we are talking about getting back to where we were in an earlier decade." Schoesler said what he likes about WSU's proposal is that it was developed from the grassroots up, not the "ivory tower" down. Schoesler: "This was crafted by commodity groups, across the board in the interim putting together a grassroots plan for what agricultural research and extension should be and I think that is the preferred direction anyone in agriculture would like to see." The farmer-lawmaker said other ag issues for the legislature could be more progress on water issues, property rights and rail transportation. While balancing a budget for the new biennium might be easy, Schoesler raised concerns about the long term sustainability of the level of state spending. I'm Bob Hoff.