This week marks the first major deadline of the 2014 supplemental session. The policy committees in the House and Senate, including the House and Senate Higher Education Committees, must move bills forward to either the floor or the appropriations committee to keep them “alive” this session by the close of business on Wednesday. The same is true in the Senate with the deadline this Friday.
It is worth noting that a bill may not move forward by this deadline but may still be active because it is “Necessary to Implement the Budget” or may reappear as part of the budget.
The House Higher Education Committee held a series of public hearings on Tuesday morning. Among the bills taken up by the Committee included an audit of the state universities (HB 2038) and the creation of an Institute for Teaching Excellence (HB 2661).
Evergreen testified with concerns about proposed legislation that would design and implement a program that provides information to high achieving, low-income high school students with the intention of increasing the number of applications from this group four-year institutions of higher education in Washington (HB 2694). As drafted Evergreen expressed concerns about the inclusion of the term “selective” as it relates to identifying higher education institutions, the stated assumption in the bill that national aptitude tests are predictors of college success, and the need to ensure a broad range of options to identify high achieving students. Western Washington University also expressed concerns about the bill.
The Committee also moved several bills through to the next step. Among the bills the Committee to action was legislation to concerning mentoring and service learning opportunities in Washington (HB 2400), efficiency legislation for Washington’s public baccalaureate institutions (HB 2613), establishing statewide educational attainment goals (HB 2626) and the creation of the Pay It Forward program (HB 2720).
In the afternoon the Senate Higher Education Committee held several public hearings on proposed legislation. Among the bills that the Committee focused its attention on was efforts to expand the display of metric information for the public baccalaureate institutions to include the branch campuses (SB 6482) and to provide a tuition and fee exemption to the children and surviving spouses of certain highway workers (SB 6370).
The Council of Presidents testified against Senate Bill 6043 which would cap tuition for undergraduate residents students so as not to exceed 10% of the most current average annual wage reported by the Washington Employment Security Department (ESD). The average annual wage reported by ESD in 2012 was $51,595.
The Committee also moved several gubernatorial appointments to higher education related boards forward to the Senate Floor for confirmation.