Supplemental Budget advocacy moves to Senate (SB 6032)
AFSCME Council 28 (WFSE) gave applause and raised concerns on the governor’s supplemental budget proposal Tuesday (Jan. 9), this time in the Senate Ways and Means Committee on SB 6032.
Committee Chair Sen. Christine Rolfes (23rd Dist.) praised AFSCME Council 28 (WFSE) and all who testified because the governor’s proposal is the first draft of the separate proposals that the House and Senate will write. Identifying concerns now will help form those later proposals that will become the final supplemental budget.
With that in mind, our Lobbyist Matt Zuvich praised the governor’s plan for investing in more staff in Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Juvenile Rehabilitation.
“Those staffing level bumps are going to help a lot to provide services,” Zuvich said. “That population often takes more than one-on-one staffing.”
Zuvich also called for provisions to build on progress made on recruitment and retention of staff and urged support for the request for additional police officers at The Evergreen State College.
He also repeated concerns about the potential reduction in Community Corrections officers from the state’s proposed concurrent consecutive sentencing and the need for caseload help for social workers in the new Department of Children, Youth and Families.
And he called for action on funding of state parks.
“Continuing to use parks user fees as a major method to fund state parks is not the direction we need to continue on,” Zuvich said.
See his testimony at:
https://www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&eventID=2018011078&eventID=2018011078&startStreamAt=4038&stopStreamAt=4177&autoStartStream=true
