Check my earlier post for the best part about yesterday’s press briefing with Senate Majority Leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane).

NOW … here’s the wonky stuff.

Sen. Brown acknowledged that the new revenue forecast (coming Feb. 14) might not be pretty. “I expect [revenues] to go down. We’re holding all the bills until we see the revenue forecast.” She said a $150-200 million drop in revenues “sounds right to me.” If it’s more than that, she said they’ll “have to go back to the drawing board.”

She was challenged by public radio reporter Austin Jenkins about property tax reform. Jenkins pointed out that during the special session in December to codify Tim Eyman’s property tax cap, there had been a lot of talk from Democrats about dealing with property taxes in a more comprehensive way.

Brown simply said it was a giant issue and many of the proposed solutions deal with constitutional amendments, making the issue too thorny to take up this session.

Brown was also asked how serious she was about finding the money to support last session’s family leave legislation. (A scaled-back family leave bill passed last session—leave is covered to care for children, but not for spouses, domestic partners, seniors, or other family members—that didn’t include funding beyond initial startup costs. “Are you punting?” she was asked.

Sen. Brown said: “We [the Senate] have supported the bill on two occasions. It’s pretty clear that we just haven’t come up with it [full funding]. We’re going to get there. I believe we’re going to have paid family leave [in the future.]”

The full house of reporters—about 15 of us—continued to press: Would she put it to the ballot? Brown reiterated that the Senate was “committed to paid family leave…we’ve already passed it in this cycle….” She said she would only take it to the ballot to find funding if there was an agreement with the House. She said, however, that her preference was to find funding without going to the ballot.

She was also grilled on funding health care. Brown was frank, saying there just wasn’t money to pay for everybody, and they needed to keep working on it.

I only got off one question. I wanted to know where Brown stood on the spat in the Senate Judiciary Committee between the committee chair, Sen. Adam Kline (D-37, S. Seattle) and committee vice chair Sen. Rodney Tom (D-48, Medina) over a bill to prevent landlords from discriminating against Section 8 rental applicants.

Sen. Kline is for the bill, Sen. Tom (a Realtor) against. The bill has passed the House.

Sen. Brown said she supported the idea. I pressed her and asked her if she supported the version that passed the House. She said she did.