3:30 p.m. UPDATE:

Gregoire’s office confirmed she has canceled the rule change that would have taken effect Tuesday.

The $13 million in cuts will have to be found somewhere else in the welfare budget, and those haven’t been finalized yet. They could include some version of the cap on child care income that is being canceled for now.

“The deal isn’t fully cooked yet,” Gregoire spokeswoman Karina Shagren said.

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Gov. Chris Gregoire has agreed to cancel a cut she had ordered to government-subsidized child care, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown said today. But it could be back in the next budget period.

The $13 million cut, due to take effect Tuesday, essentially would have started phasing state government out of the business of helping parents with steady jobs pay for day care.

The governor’s office hasn’t yet confirmed it to me, but Brown says Gregoire agreed in a meeting Thursday afternoon to instead make other cuts in welfare programs, including charging parents higher co-pays for child care.

If the original cut were to go through, the state would turn away new applicants for Working Connections Child Care unless they are so poor they are eligible for welfare. Each month, officials predict roughly 1,600 families who would otherwise have received child care subsidies would be ineligible.

Legislative leaders like Brown oppose it and unionized day-care workers from the politically powerful Service Employees International Union have flooded hearings to complain about it. House members even attached a mandate to their budget bill to cancel the cut, but governors can veto such provisos.

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One day after a Senate committee went behind closed doors for what was dubbed a “joint caucus,” Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown said the practice would not reoccur.

The unusual caucus – really just a meeting of all committee members in private – was called by Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee Chairwoman Rosemary McAuliffe at the end of the regular meeting Thursday. McAuliffe said the topic would be bipartisanship and would happen each Thursday at the end of the regular meeting.

“We talked about it in leadership and in caucus and we agreed that although her intent was …

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This clearly is not going to make Sen. Jim Kastama popular with his Democratic leaders. But the Puyallup lawmaker said he will introduce a resolution before newly elected Sen. Nick Harper is sworn in Monday to deny him his seat.

Kastama said he believes improper and illegal actions by a Seattle political consultant changed the results of a primary election that saw Harper defeat incumbent Democrat Jean Berkey.

“I cannot in good conscience vote to seat a senator whose election was altered by an illegal action,” Kastama said. “The documents I have seen, including signed affidavits, show there is no doubt that Moxie Media’s actions were illegal and that they were responsible for changing the outcome of the election.

“These actions shifted a sure primary election victory from Sen. Jean Berkey to a razor-thin victory for Rod Rieger, a candidate whose support and campaign efforts were largely nonexistent.”

Moxie Media and its co-owner Lisa Collins MacLean have been sued in civil court by state Attorney General Rob McKenna for four violations of campaign finance disclosure law. They arose out of her efforts to defeat Berkey on behalf of a coalition of labor and trial lawyers groups.

A state Public Disclosure Commission investigation found that MacLean purposefully delayed disclosure and created multiple layers of political action committees to make sure the source of money for the campaign was not made public until after the election.

Part of the effort to defeat Berkey, deemed not liberal enough by the interest groups, was to run a shadow campaign for conservative candidate Rieger, thus denying Berkey votes from both the left and the right. She ended up finishing third in the top-two primary and Harper went on to win the general election. Read more »

While the Legislature will largely be shying away from taxes in the session starting next week, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown is open to asking voters for new revenue for transportation projects.

“That is a possibility for us, putting together something that has statewide economic development impact,” Brown said. She brought up the issue at a panel discussion during this morning’s Associated Press Legislative Preview.

She left open what taxes could go up, but in the past lawmakers have turned to gas taxes. Money raised by increases in the gas tax last decade, first by a nickel and then by 9 1/2 cents, has funded hundreds of projects but is now running out.

Among the “mega-projects” that would need new revenue to get off the ground is an extension of state Route 167 to the Port of Tacoma, but there’s no guarantee that would make a list of funded projects. Brown said she would want to make sure the North-South Corridor in her hometown of Spokane gets a piece of any funding, and that mass transit and other non-road projects get their share. She also mentioned stormwater cleanup projects.

The other three legislative leaders weren’t crazy about the idea.

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Majority Democrats in Olympia say they are looking at using the state budget to block state Attorney General Rob McKenna’s constitutional challenge to the federal health care reform bill.

While acknowledging his right as an independently elected official to take the action along with nine other attorneys general, they think they could put a proviso in the budget to prevent any state funds from being spent in the case.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown sent McKenna a letter today urging him to withdraw from the suit. The letter did not contain any threats — veiled or obvious — …

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The Washington Policy Center is pushing a constitutional amendment to require more transparency in the legislative process.

The free-market think tank’s proposal is a long shot to ever become part of the state constitution, because it would need approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate before it could even go to the voters. Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown on Monday pooh-poohed claims by Jason Mercier of the policy center that the Senate is operating under a veil of secrecy.

Mercier has details on his blog. His amendment would require a public hearing before a vote on a bill, …

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The senators who proposed and backed the budget amendment to close McNeil Island prison have also signed on to a letter urging McNeil be kept open.

What’s more, the letter calls for the Vancouver-area senators’ local prison, which they pushed to save, to be downsized.

Here’s the sequence of events: The Senate Ways and Means Committee approved the amendment Friday night to close McNeil and avoid closing the less expensive Larch Correctional Center in Yacolt. Sen. Craig Pridemore of Vancouver proposed the amendment and Sen. Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield defended it.

The full Senate gave its approval with no debate on the prison plan, but Pierce County’s delegation, upset about the prospect of losing jobs at McNeil, fired off a letter to Majority Leader Lisa Brown. (The House delegation did the same to Speaker Frank Chopp. You can read both letters here.)

A couple of names stand out on the letter: Zarelli and Pridemore’s.

They signed it even though the letter says, of Pridemore’s amendment:

In the Ways and Means committee the budget was amended to fully fund the Larch facility and totally close the McNeil facility. We question the logic of this decision.

After questioning their own logic, the senators go on to request that parts of Larch be closed:

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It has become a tradition that won’t die – sort of like dumping a bucket of Gatorade on the winning coach.

At each year’s Associated Press legislative forum, the leaders of the four caucuses are asked to suggest a popular song to become the theme for the upcoming session.

Here are this year’s nominees. Feel free to discuss (and come up with something better. Please!).

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown – “The Fixer,” by Pearl Jam. (“When something’s gone, I wanna fight to get it back again.”)

Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt – “Should’ve Said No,” by Taylor Swift (though …

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