It’s time for Supreme Court to issue real threat

The Washington State Legislature couldn’t come up with a plan &#8212 even after three special sessions this year &#8212 to fully fund public education. That is the reason it’s being fined $100,000 a day by the state’s Supreme Court.

The governor met with the top members of the Legislature on Monday.

“I’m going to ask legislators to work on this vigorously before a special session to tee up a solution that we can then pass in quick order in a special session,” Governor Jay Inslee said.

So Inslee will not call a special session until there’s an agreement, which there isn’t.

The threat that’s motivating them to do this, supposedly, is that fine of $100,000 a day. But it turns out that’s even less of a threat than I initially thought.

The fine is supposed to go into an education fund &#8212 that’s what the court said anyway. I thought that at least there would be an accountant who would walk into the office each day and fire up a computer and type in “$100,000” and press “enter” and move the money from account “A” to account “B.”

But it turns out, even that is not happening. Because money can’t be moved without a vote of the Legislature. The Legislature has to approve its own fine.

So what’s happening, according to The Seattle Times, is that they’re keeping a record of the fine, which would mean someone walks into the office and types in “$100,000” on a spreadsheet and doesn’t move it anywhere. Or someone with a very good memory keeps a record in their head.

Or nobody keeps a record, but at some point, they’ll multiply the number of days by $100,000 and then write it down.

If the Supreme Court was serious, it would just raise the fine. The state needs about $1.5 billion a year to fund education, so if they just raised the fine to $4,109,589 per day, that would do it.

The Legislature could say, “Well, nothing we can do, we have to pay it.” Then raise everybody’s taxes and problem solved.