Legislative Commentary

When we’re on the floor of the Senate chamber debating and voting on legislation, it’s known as “floor action.”

At this point in the session, when the full Senate is working through bills that were moved forward by the various committees, the floor action can last all day, and then some.

Our first day of floor action this past week had us in the Senate chamber until early the next morning.

We spent the better part of the final two hours on two pieces of legislation that sure look like an attempt by a powerful labor union to call in favors from the new Senate majority.

One of the bills has to be among the worst pieces of legislation I’ve seen in years. In a new policy paper our budget leader refers to it as the “most disingenuous and cynical bill in Olympia.” I think “corrupt” might be a better word than cynical.

Floor action in the Senate continued Saturday, with a break Sunday, then for three more days before the Senate committees begin work again – this time on bills sent over from the House.

As a full-time farmer I already knew the importance of international markets to our state. But serving as leader of our Senate caucus has given me an even greater appreciation for establishing strong bonds with representatives of other nations.

This past week brought visits with the consul generals of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru, as well as Mr. Yoichiro Yamada, consul general for one of Washington’s most important trading partners: Japan.

Inslee’s energy tax still hangs over Senate

My previous commentary mentioned how the governor’s proposed energy tax has already been declared “necessary to implement the budget.”

This makes the bill (Senate Bill 6203) exempt from the usual deadlines for moving legislation forward, which buys time for Olympia’s Democrat majority to keep making changes in hopes of reducing the opposition.

The bill already is up to 50-plus exemptions, mostly for certain industries, which would pretty much leave middle-income families feeling the most pain from the tax.

The “NTIB” designation also suggests that the new majority is dead-set on getting some sort of “carbon pricing” (the governor’s term) through the legislative process this year, in the package of adjustments made to the state budget.

Why? Governor Inslee has done a lot of talking outside our state about reducing carbon emissions, even though his fellow Democrats in his own state failed to support his previous try at legislation.

I’m confident there are a lot of wealthy West Coast liberals who want to see a carbon bill – any carbon bill – come out of Olympia this year, and that sort of pressure (and potential reward) could do the trick.

Inslee’s tax legislation underwent a major revision this past week, just two weeks after it had received a public hearing.

I can’t see how the changes make the bill more appealing. It would still raise the cost of gas by 10 cents per gallon, for example, on the way to a total increase of 30 cents per gallon.

As one of my fellow Republican senators noted, the governor’s tax would certainly reduce carbon emissions in our state because manufacturers that can’t help but produce carbon emissions would move to another state.

K-12 education update

The education-funding system in our state is complicated, starting with the fact that Washington has 295 school districts of all shapes and sizes. We have 39 counties that collect taxes to fund the schools.

A state agency is involved in handling education money, and there are federal dollars involved. In hindsight it’s no wonder that it took years to produce the once-in-a-generation reforms to the system that we approved in 2017, in line with the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.

Knowing that a battleship can’t turn on a dime, to use an old expression, we knew it wasn’t realistic to expect that our state’s K-12 system would be able to quickly implement the reforms adopted in June. It was clear that the school districts would need time to sort things out.

We also knew some adjustments might need to be made at the legislative level in 2018. That’s why the policies don’t take full hold until 2019.

Several of those adjustments are collected in Senate Bill 6362, which came through the Senate Ways and Means Committee this past week. It adds funding for special education, for example.

The bill also addresses other areas like the “hold harmless” provisions meant to keep district-level funding stable as the McCleary fix unfolds.

I think of it as fine-tuning the work we did last year, which was endorsed by the Supreme Court. In a way it’s like giving the battleship more room to make the turn.

Farm news: From bad bill to a less bad bill

We’re seeing a lot more influence from organized labor on legislation this year. It’s no doubt due to the change in the Senate majority.

That’s even true with agriculture policy, as a Democrat senator from inner-city Seattle and one of the labor organizations apparently think they know more than state regulators and the agriculture industry when it comes to the safe use of crop-protection products.

The proof is Senate Bill 6529. In its original form this bill was clearly based on a lot of bad information (and ignorance, to put it simply) about how growers protect their crops.

The notification requirements it would have imposed, such as four business days’ notice before applying crop-protection products, were unrealistic at best. At worst they could cause serious damage to (or even the loss of) a crop.

I and others have worked to defuse this bad bill and turn it into something that is less bad – and might actually clear up some misperceptions about crop-protection products.

When SB 6529 came to the Ways and Means committee this past week, we refocused it on arranging a conversation (through a work group) about the safety of product applications and whether there are ways to possibly make this highly regulated activity even safer.

Senator Judy Warnick, our leader on the Senate agriculture committee, has more improvements to the bill that she will propose if it comes up for a full Senate vote.