Legislative Commentary

Even though the pace of the “short” legislative sessions is always faster anyway, the Senate’s new Democrat majority seems to be in a particular rush to get certain bills through the process this year.

With two notable exceptions, the long-overdue fix for the Hirst court decision and the new capital budget, the major bills Democrats have brought up for votes seem to be more about specific interest groups.

Their emphasis on social issues is a big change from the jobs-education-budget focus our Republican-led coalition brought to the Senate during our five years in charge.

Because our Democrat colleagues were so determined to push “message” bills we spent more hours in the Senate chamber than is typical for the second week of a session, when the emphasis is normally on committee work.

Passage of Hirst remedy 
is big win for rural Washington

I think it was before the 2017 session when I and other Republican lawmakers first brought up the need to find a legislative answer to the Supreme Court’s Hirst decision, which had come down in October 2016.

On Thursday night we finally got there, after many months of foot-dragging by Democrats, particularly in the House of Representatives and the governor’s office.

The Hirst ruling basically overturned the long-standing approach used by counties to permit the drilling of a household well on land where a connection to a city or community water system isn’t available.

It pretty much brought a halt to rural residential construction, which not only kept landowners from developing their property but affected real-estate transactions and the homebuilding industry and local lending institutions – and local governments that collect revenue when homes are built.

The Hirst remedy we adopted (Senate Bill 6091) is a compromise, because no side got everything it wanted.

However, it’s generally a big win for rural Washington, because the Supreme Court had left rural landowners without any good options for moving forward on putting in a well to support a new home.

And for the better part of this past year, Democrat leaders in Olympia didn’t seem to care that Hirst was causing a lot of unnecessary trouble and heartache in rural areas across our state.

Our side in the Senate wasn’t about to let this go, however, and as a result rural landowners will again have a path toward putting in a household well and making more use of their property.

It’s interesting that Governor Jay Inslee chose to sign the Hirst bill in private Friday, and share a photo on Twitter, but had his usual public ceremony for the other bill-signing of the day (the new capital budget). Is he that ashamed of doing something to help rural Washington?

Was he worried that a public signing ceremony would bring out the environmental activists and other interest groups that helped keep a Hirst fix bottled up for months, and are probably angry about the compromise? Let’s see if one of the news reporters who covers the Capitol is bold enough to ask.

Capital budget sails through Legislature, includes sizable local investments

Our side of the Senate made it clear during the 2017 session that we viewed the Hirst-case remedy and the 2017-19 capital budget as a tandem. We reasoned that it wouldn’t be consistent to allow taxpayer-supported investments in construction projects and other “capital” assets if property owners were being kept by Hirst from making construction investments of their own.

Once the Senate and House approved the Hirst solution, we quickly went ahead and moved the capital budget on through Thursday night. The governor signed it Friday.

Broadly, the $4.2 billion worth of investments is geared toward education and toward helping people with mental illness. The level of support for building, renovating or modernizing K-12 facilities is historic, at more than $1 billion.

Also, the new capital budget includes $860 million in total appropriations for higher-education facilities, split almost evenly between the community and technical college system and the public four-year institutions.

Mental health needs, another priority for Senate Republicans, would receive $132 million, divided between community behavioral health projects and state hospital projects (approximately $90 million and $42 million respectively).

Here are highlights from the 9th District investments in the new capital budget for Adams County: German American Bank Building restoration in Ritzville, $45,000; Othello water supply and storage, $1,550,000; Adams County Industrial Wastewater and Treatment Center in Othello, $1,250,000; Othello Regional Water Project, $1,000,000; The Old Hotel Art Gallery renovation and upgrades in Othello, $56,000.

‘Voting Rights Act’ could be
very costly to taxpayers

This past week I was a guest on the TVW network’s “Inside Olympia” program, and one of the many questions had to do with legislation called the Voting Rights Act of 2018. This particular bill, Senate Bill 6002, was prefiled by a Democrat senator in December, shortly after it became clear that her party would have a one-seat majority in the Senate when we convened this month.

Over the past several years Yakima and Pasco were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on the grounds that they were violating the federal Voting Rights Act.

The claim was that because the city councils were elected “at large,” or by voters citywide, instead of the positions being assigned to districts within the city, communities of people within the cities were unfairly denied the opportunity to be represented by someone they chose.

With that in mind, a number of cities in Washington are interested in moving away from “at-large” positions toward district-based positions instead, but state law needs to be changed to allow it.

I appreciate the idea of giving local governments the tools to change their election systems. One of my fellow Republican senators proposed a bill in 2017 to do just that. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ version of a state Voting Rights Act goes far beyond what the local governments need.

In spite of the title, the Democrats’ approach is also loaded up with language like “cause of action” that would create new opportunities for lawsuits that are less about voting and more about getting big payouts from cities and other local governments (like school districts).

By extension this would put taxpayers on the hook, and that alone was enough to keep me from supporting the bill when it came to the Senate floor (and passed) Friday.

SB 6002 is one of many examples why people should not judge bills by the title alone.