House wants to protect students, parents on tuition
A new bipartisan effort to dramatically slow rising college tuition costs emerged Thursday in the state House.
But the plan faces a big hurdle. The effort would cost $225 million or so — an amount that the 23-Republican-two-Democrat alliance controlling the Senate is not crazy about.
Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, and Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, introduced a bill Thursday to limit tuition increases to a figure tied to federal inflation statistics. That figure would be drastically less than the tuition increases of 19 percent in 2011-12 and 15.2 percent in 2012-13. Seaquist is chairman of the House's Higher Education Committee, while Haler is the committee's ranking Republican.