Jenn Weldy
9/24/09
HB 1594
Contacts:
Zach Hudgins (360) 786-7956
Deborah Eddy (360) 786-7848
Washington State Legislation moved more than $75 million out of the ECA [environmental cleanup account] to help fill the budget deficit, Rep. Zach Hudgins, D, said. Hudgins said he sponsored House Bill 1594 in an effort to preserve some of that money for environmental work.
Hudgins said the budget cuts “caused problems in the environment arena but it also caused problems in the tuition arena. … Not only do you need money but you need people too.”
Hudgins said there is a need to create jobs, scholarships and use the toxic cleanup account.
HB 1594 would have provided conditional grants to environmental students. The bill would have cost about $200,000 annually to implement.
“I knew we were going to be moving money out of the account and I wanted to preserve some of that for cleanup in the future,” Hudgins said. “When we’re talking about $75 million, $200,000 isn’t very much.”
The bill would have put the Higher Education Committee (HEC) in charge of implementing a process for distributing the grants. A bill cannot pass through the HEC without the approval of Committee Chair Rep. Deborah Wallace, D, Wallace did not support HB 1594 earlier this year when the legislation was in session, and could not be reached for comment.
Rep. Deborah Eddy, D, a member of the Ecology and Parks Committee and a co-sponsor of HB 1594 wrote in an email that she was not sure why Wallace rejected the bill, but that “it’s a good bet that it was at least partly a budgetary matter. Funds spent on this program would not be spent on other programs that she might consider more worldly.”
Hudgins said he thought Wallace did not want to use the fund for scholarships because it was intended for toxic cleanup—not education. He said he did not agree with Wallace’s concerns because the money was being used for the same thing, “and used very little,” he said.
Hudgins is on the Environmental Health Committee and represents environmental concerns for the Duwamish River, which has several contaminated sites.
“Many of them are from our industrial legacies,” Hudgins said. Sites like these all over Washington State need cleanup, and Hudgins said that preserving ECA funds with HB 1594 would help ensure cleanup and create jobs.
According to the bill’s digest, it “creates the environmental cleanup opportunity grant program to assist in the effort to recruit the next generation of environmental cleanup professionals.”
The bill would take funds from the State Toxics Control Account and other donations to create a conditional grant account. It would award 10 conditional scholarships annually to students pursuing environmental studies. The students would have to serve two years worth of full-time employment involved in environmental cleanup work in
Washington State within the first five years following graduation. If students did not, they would have to pay back the scholarship with interest and fees equivalent to a student loan.
“My goal was to create jobs, provide educational opportunities and to clean up toxic sites around the state all at the same time—without raising taxes,” Hudgins said, since there was already a funding source intended for toxic site cleanup.
Hudgins said he had a lot of support from both parties, and when the Legislation resumes session in January he plans to rewrite HB 1594.
Eddy wrote in an email that she would not likely co-sponsor the bill again without indication of Wallace’s support for the program.
Hudgins said he will make changes in how to better involve the different agencies, including the HEC.
“The department of ecology understands it better so they will be evaluating the criteria this time,” Hudgins said. “You perfect it as best as you can, you throw it out there … then the hearing is a perfection process.”
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