Senator takes stock of the state- post-special session

June 22, 2011 – It’s been close to a month since the end of the 30-day “special” session that was called by the governor (because the regular legislative session failed to produce a new budget). While I’ve been through many special sessions before, in 19 years as a legislator, one thing never changes: they sure aren’t friendly to a farmer’s schedule.

Even though the extra time this year produced positive results, in the form of cost-saving reforms and a budget that for once didn’t spend more than the state expects to take in, I’ll never get those 30 days back. Therefore, I’m still in catch-up mode, with only the occasional timeout to take part in the traditional post-session interviews with our district’s news media, for instance, or other late-spring traditions – such as Lind’s famous combine demolition derby (it was the usual smashing success, I told someone at the Capitol who asked).

Now if the weather would just start acting like summer – in my part of Adams County it was too windy early last week to spray, so I worked on finishing up the fertilizing. It was still on the cold and windy side for the WSU Lind Field Day this past Thursday, but I won’t complain, knowing how the rain and relative cold have been far more than an inconvenience for other growers in our state, such as hay farmers.

Update on ag-related legislation

No one expected this to be a banner year for agriculture in the Legislature – and it wasn’t – but I’d say the industry gained ground overall.

Legislation I introduced regarding animal health inspections (Senate Bill 5235) was joined a week later by what’s called a “companion” bill – meaning the same language was filed in the House of Representatives as House Bill 1538. Having identical measures in each chamber improves the chances that a proposal will make it through, and that was the case this time, as the House bill ended up becoming law.

A bill regarding emissions from anaerobic digesters didn’t fare as well, passing overwhelmingly in the Senate but not in the House. Senate Bill 5343, as sponsored by nearly all of the Senate Agriculture and Rural Economic Development Committee members (myself included), is intended to give the fledgling anaerobic-digester industry a chance to survive and grow without snarling it with red tape. It’s not clear whether concerns raised by the regional air-pollution agencies and state Department of Ecology are what kept this bill from receiving a full House vote, after the House Environment Committee had made changes, but I expect we’ll give it another try in 2012.

One of the ag-related policy bills to become law will set new standards for egg producers. This was an interesting bill because its primary opponent was the Humane Society of the United States – the activists who backed the trapping-ban initiative passed in 2000 and are now behind a proposed ballot measure concerning egg-laying hens.

I’m a firm supporter of the people’s right to make laws through the initiative process set forth in our state constitution, but I wonder if those hired to go out and gather signatures for Initiative 1130 are being up front about the fact that the Legislature has already addressed the question of housing conditions for hens. That’s a significant point and should be disclosed. (This new law takes effect Aug. 1.)

To me the biggest gains for agriculture this year came through the new state operating budget for 2011-13. As half of the Senate Republican budget-negotiating team my responsibilities included working out the natural-resource appropriations in what ultimately became a bipartisan budget, which put me in a position to insist – successfully – that funding for our agricultural fairs remain whole.

I wish I’d been able to keep our conservation districts from seeing a drop in funding, but it would have been much worse had the Senate not taken a bipartisan and united stand in negotiating with the House.

Sometimes, when a policy change isn’t possible, we can use the budget to bring about change. I had proposed a measure that would have put the state Conservation Commission in the driver’s seat on the stockwatering question. Under Senate Bill 5723 the commission would have been charged with developing a process that brought agencies (Ecology, Agriculture) and other interested parties together. However, after my bill fell short of a full Senate vote, I managed to get stockwatering into the budget, like this (the DNA angle is especially significant):

Sec. 312 FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, THE DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY, AND THE STATE CONSERVATION COMMISSION

(1) The directors of the department of agriculture, the department of ecology, and the conservation commission shall coordinate a process to examine the issue of achieving the state’s water quality objectives relating to livestock operations. The directors shall determine what personnel are assigned to this activity and may provide oversight to the process. In implementing this process, the directors shall involve representatives of involved agencies, stakeholders, and tribes. The topics to be considered include:

(a) The appropriate background and training for personnel that conduct inspections of and provide technical assistance to livestock operators and whether personnel need to be specifically trained and assigned to serve this function;

(b) The roles and relationships between technical assistance, inspection, and enforcement, and the concept of customer service;

(c) The use, availability, and limitations of DNA testing as a water quality diagnosis tool and the recommendation of water quality testing protocols needed for livestock operations investigations;

(d) The availability and constraints of state and federal programs for planning, installation, maintenance of conservation and pollution control practices, and review of alternative practices;

(e) The extent of known water quality problems relating to livestock operations;

(f) Best methods to achieve state water quality objectives in the context of a system that includes both regulatory and incentive-based approaches;

(g) A review of considerations used to determine water quality standards, including those applicable to the shellfish industry; and

(h) The availability of state and federal funding and whether it is being appropriately allocated.

(2) The directors identified in subsection (1) of this section shall develop recommendations for the administration and improvement of the program, including recommendations on the use of DNA technology. The directors shall provide a written summary of the activities and recommendations to the legislature and the governor by December 1, 2011.

(3) The activities under this section must be completed to the extent feasible from within existing fiscal resources available to the involved state agencies.

(4) This section expires December 31, 2011.

The mention of stockwatering in the new budget comes several pages after a truly groundbreaking part – again, presented here as the governor signed it last week. I call your attention to (7)(b), which for the first time ties Ecology’s performance to funding:

Sec. 302 FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY

(7) The department shall review its water rights application review procedures to simplify the procedures, eliminate unnecessary steps, and decrease the time required to issue decisions. The department shall implement changes to improve water rights processing for which it has current administrative authority. The department shall report on reforms implemented and efficiencies achieved as demonstrated through enhanced permit processing to the appropriate committees of the legislature on December 1, 2011, and October 1, 2012.

(a) The department shall consult with key stakeholders on statutory barriers to efficient water rights processing and effective water management, including identification of obsolete, confusing, or conflicting statutory provisions. The department shall report stakeholder recommendations to appropriate committees of the legislature by December 1, 2011, and October 1, 2012.

(b) $500,000 of the general fund – state appropriation for fiscal year 2013 is provided solely for processing water right permit applications only if the department of ecology issues at least five hundred water right decisions in fiscal year 2012, and if the department of ecology does not issue at least five hundred water right decisions in fiscal year 2012 the amount provided in this subsection shall lapse and remain unexpended. The department of ecology shall submit a report to the office of financial management and the state treasurer by June 30, 2012, that documents whether five hundred water right decisions were issued in fiscal year 2012.

(c) The department shall maintain an ongoing accounting of water right applications received and acted on and shall post that information to the department’s Internet site.

Farm tour season underway

June and July are good months for farm/crop tours. Last week’s Field Day in Lind was only about one-third of the way down the schedule coordinated by WSU and funded by the Washington Grain Alliance.

Tomorrow brings a pair of events – the Cook Agronomy Farm Field Day just outside Pullman and the Potato Field Day in Othello. And my calendar is marked for July 7, the date of this year’s Spillman Agronomy Farm Field Day in Pullman – a particular favorite of mine, just as it was for my late uncle Ed Heinemann.

Rust response: a good return on the taxpayers’ investment

There’s no question that the people of Washington (and beyond) derive great benefit from the investments made in our state’s two research universities, but every so often that point is really driven home. For example, Dr. Xianming Chen of Washington State University has done a great job of alerting wheat growers about the threat posed by rust, through timely reports, and WSU Extension joined in by sharing information with growers and agricultural-chemical companies.

Fortunately, wheat farmers also have access to reasonably priced products to protect their crops, because “generic” doesn’t apply only to prescription drugs these days. So between public-sector research (WSU) and private-sector research (effective products, now at less cost) growers aren’t caught unaware and unarmed by rusts.

My legislative district is home to two public baccalaureate universities – WSU and Eastern Washington University – so it’s no surprise that my biggest disappointment about the new budget is what it does to higher education. Not only will students have to pay more tuition, but funding reductions understandably raise questions about the future of research and valuable services such as WSU Extension.

Report from the field

While I’m the only state legislator who farms fulltime, some of my colleagues also have a foot in farming or ranching.

One of them, Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, raises apples, cherries and pears (in addition to being a pharmacist) and responded to my request for a crop report after consulting with tree-fruit industry folks in Chelan County.

The peak cherry harvest typically would begin this week, but this year it is expected around July 4 instead. Limited harvesting is under way in the very early cherry orchards/varieties. The recent warm weather is causing some cherries to drop, which is normal. However, the drop this season is expected to be slightly larger than normal due to the winter damage that occurred in November and the early spring frost.

It is too early to know how much the current drop will reduce the 2011 cherry crop. Even so, a good-sized crop is expected – the estimate last week was for approximately 175,633 tons, which is more than last year’s 138,275 tons but less than the record of 196,198 tons set in 2009. Some shipments are expected to extend into September.

Washington’s 2010-11 apple crop was a record 109 million 40# equivalent boxes, the new apple crop estimate will be available in August.