Legislative Commentary

It isn’t every day that I am able to talk about Harrington and Washtucna to my Senate colleagues, but today House Bill 1209 gave me a reason.

Without going into great detail, the bill would lift the limit on deposits of public funds from rural counties into credit unions that are exempt from the business and occupation tax (banks aren’t exempt).

To me this isn’t really about credit unions versus banks.

It’s more about causing even more capital to be exported from rural Washington into big-city money centers, at a time when Harrington has just one bank, and Washtucna is now one of the many rural communities without a financial institution of any kind.

It’s another example of the urban-rural divide at the Capitol that our Senate Republican Caucus has had to deal with regularly this session, now that Democrats control the lawmaking process.

Because the new Senate majority wanted to push HB 1209 and so many other House bills through the Senate this week, there was little time for seeing 9th District residents.

For example, Thursday was the Washington Library Association’s annual legislative day, and I had looked forward to visiting with librarians from Asotin and Spokane counties.

However, that privilege went to my staff when I got stuck on other Senate matters.

The good news is that the session should be over a week from today, and I’ll be able to get home to Adams County and our district, to stay.

Democrats’ energy-tax proposal is out of steam

Signed copies of the book that Governor Jay Inslee co-wrote some years back have been on sale in the legislative gift shop for years.

Maybe the shop has realized the book is overpriced, or maybe the management just wants to clear out space for other merchandise, but for whatever reason, the book’s price has been dropped by 30 percent.

Coincidentally, the liberal wing of the new Senate majority has dropped its push of the regressive energy tax Inslee proposed.

This is good news, but it doesn’t offset the fact that so many majority Democrats thought it was okay to keep pushing a $1.2 billion tax when state revenues are coming in more than $2.4 billion ahead of expectations.

Senate Bill 6203 would have increased home heating and cooling and motor fuel costs for families and employers, but I don’t think those things matter to the wealthy special-interest groups that just love the idea of a carbon tax.

Will those special interests now try to impose an energy tax through our state’s initiative process?

Good luck with that. SB 6203 would have meant an immediate 10-12 cents more per gallon at the pump, on the way to 30 cents more per gallon, with none of that money going to road projects.

And that’s just one of the downsides. I can’t see the people of our state falling for such a bad deal.

‘Student safety’ bill is 
a stealth ban on gun purchases

We see a lot of “bill-title politics” in Olympia, meaning the title of a bill is written in a way that is meant to send a political message.

But Senate Bill 6620 takes that idea to a new level, with the title “Improving security in schools and the safety of students.”

It hides the fact that this bill, another product of the Senate majority’s liberal wing, includes a straight-up ban on purchases or transfers of semiautomatic rifles by people younger than 21.

The measure started out targeting semiautomatic rifles with “tactical features,” but the majority Democrats on the budget committee changed it to cover all semiautomatic rifles – which takes in your average everyday plinking .22-caliber rifle.

For some reason the bill, introduced Feb. 23, was referred to our budget committee instead of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, which traditionally considers policy proposals concerning firearms.

The committee’s Democrat members voted Thursday to move it forward. That was more than three weeks after the official deadline for Senate committees to act on Senate bills.

I suspect SB 6620 is the majority Democrats’ effort to look like they’re being responsive to the anti-gun feelings caused by the recent Florida high school shooting. Having voted earlier this year to pass a bill that linked firearms and mental health, I think our efforts are better spent in that direction.

Session moves into final week

Today was the final day for the Senate and House to act on bills originating in the “opposite house.” That means we are through voting on bills passed by the House of Representatives, and vice versa.

There are exceptions: the supplemental budgets, the policy bills that are part of the budget package, and bills that came out of the Senate and House in different forms. We have until March 8 (day 60) to address those.

I expect we will work this weekend on what are called “concurrences.” When a bill passed by the Senate is amended by the House, then passed, it has to come back to the Senate for us to either concur (agree) or not concur (disagree) with the House amendment(s).

The same is true for bills passed by the House that were amended by the Senate and sent back to the House. There are a few ways to deal with disagreements between the two chambers, and this stage could last into next week.

The Senate and House need to agree on final versions of the three supplemental budgets before we adjourn for the year. When our side of the aisle led the Senate, we repeatedly put budgets on the table that received strong bipartisan votes.

Whether that will happen again this year, with Democrats in control, is likely going to depend on the levels of tax relief linked to the supplemental operating budget. Olympia can afford a full offset of the one-year property-tax spike related to education funding, and tax fairness for non-aerospace manufacturers.

It also concerns me that the Senate Democrats are proposing to cut funding for Running Start programs at our community colleges, even though the treasury has plenty of money. The ultimate question is whether the new Democrat leadership will fix the flaws in their budget enough to earn bipartisan support.