Legislative Commentary

The two Senate committees that address fiscal issues – Transportation, and the one I serve on, Ways and Means – have joined the policy committees in taking a break so the entire Senate may go to work fulltime in the Senate chamber. We’ll have through March 11 to decide which bills move across the Capitol Rotunda to the House of Representatives.

This past week, with the policy committees already on pause, the Senate’s days were pretty much divided between action on the “floor” of the Senate and work in the fiscal committees. With one exception, the full Senate generally focused on the simple and uncontroversial but important bills that make up the bulk of the legislation that is approved each year; please keep reading for details.

Meet with me March 11 – over the telephone!


I will hold a “telephone town hall” on the evening of Wednesday, March 11. If you have participated in these conversations before, and thousands across the 9th District have in past years, then you know it’s a convenient and effective way to get together and talk about what’s happening at the Capitol.

It’s great to meet face-to-face, but on a dark winter evening it’s much easier to stay at home and talk with me over the phone than go out on the road. If you haven’t taken part in one of these calls before, please give it a try this time.

The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. To join in simply dial 1-800-756-6155 and follow the instructions. The call will last until 8 p.m., and there will be opportunities for you to vote in “instant polls” on some of the issues before the Legislature.

Transportation reforms win Senate approval


The eight reform bills in the Senate’s proposed transportation package were approved Feb. 27, five of them by big margins. The three reforms that passed by narrower margins had to do with permit streamlining, a different approach to stormwater management and fish passages, and what amounts to a diversion of gas-tax money into the general fund, which is contrary to a provision in our state constitution. The fact that those votes were closer was not a surprise.

It was a surprise, however, that a member of the Senate opposition raised a parliamentary question as we were discussing the revenue side of the transportation package. All such questions must be answered by the president of the Senate, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, so the remainder of the transportation package is sidelined until Monday at the soonest.

As Feb. 27 was the deadline for our Ways and Means Committee to act on Senate bills, I was among those who then traded the Senate chamber for a Senate hearing room and went right back to work.

Update on legislation I’m sponsoring


The designation of “heavy haul industrial corridor” may be applied by the state Department of Transportation to highways so that overweight containers may legally move between a port and a railhead. After talking with the Port of Whitman County, I introduced Senate Bill 5272, to place the heavy-haul designation on a 4.5-mile corridor on State Route 128 and State Route 193, between the Idaho border and the Port of Wilma, on the Snake River.

This is one of those bills that is important for the economy of our area and is not at all controversial, as indicated by the unanimous support it received this week from the Senate. SB 5272 has been referred to the House.