Legislative Commentary

Last month I mentioned how a member of the Senate minority had introduced legislation to prohibit state government from, of all things, using gas-powered leaf blowers. It was my pick for the “Really?” award of the 2014 session – until the governor stepped to a microphone last Tuesday morning.

While Governor Inslee deserves another “really?” for quietly giving pay raises this month to the directors of Ecology, Labor and Industries, and Revenue – in other words, people in charge of regulations/fees and taxes – the public declaration he made takes the cake. Keep reading for the rest of that story.

We spent most of our time this week in the Senate chamber, voting on bills, which meant a shorter list of visitors from back home. Members of the Latino Civic Alliance from Pasco and Othello stopped by Monday when they were here for Latino Legislative Day; I also met with physicians and adult family home providers from the Ninth District. The Tri-Cities had a big contingent here Thursday and Friday, including many members of the Tri-Cities Legislative Council, as well as Chief Mike Harris and commissioners Tom Hughes, Todd Blackman and Ron Shuck from Franklin County Fire District 3.

Yesterday the Senate took a moment to formally recognize someone who became a good friend to me while he was busy doing great things as president of Eastern Washington University: Dr. Rodolfo Arévalo, who is retiring after eight years in Cheney.

During his time as the first Latino president of a public four-year university in Washington, Eastern began offering new degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math – the STEM courses many employers like to see these days – and really reached out to students who were the first in their family to attend a university.

The university has a much larger profile these days, thanks to Dr. Arévalo’s work, and that’s before you get to the national championship-winning football program. I wish him a happy retirement!

Session moves into second half

The Senate committees completed their work on Senate bills this week. In all they recommended the passage of about 480 measures. Many of those will be pulled by me and other members of the Rules committee onto our voting calendar, but that still doesn’t guarantee they will make it to a vote.

The deadline for voting on Senate bills, except those that are hitched to the budget, was 5 p.m. Tuesday.

I expected we’d work particularly late on Monday; that’s a holiday for the rest of state government, and many others, but Washington’s constitution doesn’t allow for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in January or the Presidents Day holiday.

On Wednesday we went back to our committees and began work on bills passed by the House of Representatives.

Some good, common sense Senate bills already bound for House

The first few days of voting by the full Senate brought the passage of around 100 bills. While many represent technical corrections or other simple changes to the law, some bills of greater significance are also on their way to the House of Representatives already.

The first of my bills to receive Senate approval this year came up for a vote this afternoon. Senate Bill 6446 would patch a hole in the program known as Payment In Lieu of Taxes, or PILT.

That’s how the Department of Fish and Wildlife compensates counties for the loss of local property taxes, which cannot be levied on state-owned lands. WDFW doesn’t compensate counties for parcels it owns that are less than 100 contiguous acres; however, sometimes a parcel under that limit may have more commercial value than a parcel above the limit. My bill, which would do away with the 100-acre PILT limit (except in obvious cases, such as boat ramps), won unanimous approval.

Friday the Senate approved a bill that helps bring our state’s abundance of hydropower a little closer to being recognized as the renewable resource it is. I’m a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 6058, which could benefit ratepayers who are being forced to spend more because their utilities are paying more to add wind and solar power to their energy portfolios, as required by the Initiative-937 law of 2006. The final vote on this was 28-20, one of the closer margins of the week.

I also helped pass legislation which would basically treat assaults on line workers at our state hospitals (Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, and Western State Hospital over in Pierce County) the same, in terms of criminal charges, as assaults on doctors and nurses at those two facilities. (A dozen members of the Senate minority opposed Senate Bill 6022, which makes me wonder how the bill will fare with the House majority.)

We gave a unanimous vote to Senate Bill 6387, mentioned in my Jan. 24 e-commentary, which would significantly increase access to services for people with developmental disabilities. Also passing unanimously was Senate Bill 6040, which is aimed at protecting our state waterways from infestations of the non-native zebra and quagga mussels.

Meanwhile, the governor talks about…the death penalty?

On Tuesday morning we learned the governor had called a news conference, to begin shortly. With the Legislature halfway through its session, and important issues such as jobs and education and the budget before us, what could he want to discuss in such a public way?

The announcement: Governor Inslee proclaimed he will not sign death warrants issued during his term in office.

I don’t know why his change of heart was so important that the declaration couldn’t wait another several weeks, until the Legislature adjourns. Also, while the governor certainly has the legal authority to block executions, his decision to use it in such a sweeping way, rather than approach each case individually, seems short-sighted. I’ll place my trust in our county prosecutors and hope they will continue to keep the death penalty in mind when it’s an available option.

The heinous offenses committed by the nine inmates now on our state’s death row are evidence that capital punishment is still the best fit for some crimes.

One thing jumped out: The governor spoke of how he expects his action will cause our state to join a “national conversation” about the death penalty.

Perhaps he should have that discussion at the state level first – although it might be a brief conversation, seeing that legislators from his own party in the House of Representatives balked at voting on a death-penalty bill last year or this year.

As a new member of the House in the early 1990s, I served with the lady from Kitsap County who successfully led the effort to have the Legislature enact capital punishment a dozen years earlier.

How many years since then has the governor’s political party controlled the lawmaking process, yet no one has proposed tossing out the death-penalty law?

The governor’s moratorium hardly seems like the sort of leadership people are hoping to see from Olympia this year.