Welcome to Policy Watch 2007
PART I: Upcoming Advocacy Days for WEEKS THREE and FOUR:
WEEK THREE – 1/22-1/26
MONDAY and TUESDAY, 1/22-23 Hunger Action Days:
1/22 begins 8:00 am, 3rd floor Legislative building;
1/23 begins 8:00 am, Senate Rules Committee Room, 1st Floor Legislative building,
inside the Lt Governor’s Office. Contact: Linda@childrensalliance.org
WEDNESDAY 1/24 -- Annual Disability Legislative Reception; Capitol Rotunda
Contact: DonnaP@CTED.WA.GOV 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Arrangements have been made for sign language interpreters.
THURSDAY 1/25 WA State Coalition Against Domestic Violence Lobby Day –
Statewide. General Administration Building; starts at 10:00 am –
Contact: action@wscadv.org.
WEEK FOUR – 1/29-2/02
1/29 Native American Lobby Day - State Capitol Rotunda.
Contact: icwourstories@yahoo.com Gather at Noon
1/31 Developmental Disabilities Advocacy Day (United Churches of Olympia,
10:00 am); contact: http://www.arcwa.org/advocacy_day.htm [There is a
DD Advocacy Day every Wednesday, check time/place via web site.]
1/31 Washington Adult Day Services Association
Contact:
2/01 Housing Advocacy Day, begins at 8:30 am, United Churches of Olympia.
Contact: Ben Gitenstein (ben@wliha.org)
2/01 Head Start/ECEAP
Contact: Amie Lapp Payne (amie@wsaheadstarteceap.com
Weekly (or Multiple) Lobby Days
EVERY WEDNESDAY, The Arc of Washington State will hold their weekly Developmental Disabilities mini-Advocacy Days, from January 31 thru April 11. Each week a different disability issue will be highlighted. For location and other details – go to: http://www.arcwa.org/advocacy_day.htm
EVERY THURSDAY, the Children’s Budget Coalition will host a brown bag lunch.
Noon – 1:00 pm. – John A. Cherberg Building, House Hearing Room A – back room. Briefings available on request. Contact: sarah@childrensalliance.org , or, jon@childrensalliance.org (206-324-0340 X 19).
PART II – WEEK TWO IN OLYMPIA
THE SCENE
If you are thinking that the Capitol is a place of quiet contemplation, occupied by a lot of stuffed-shirted poohbahs, think again.
This week alone saw “lobby days” by a wide range of groups: the League of Women Voters, the Commission on African American Affairs, people involved with Credit Unions, bikers concerned about helmet laws, and the League of Education Voters - lots of parents and teachers who want the law to allow local education levies to pass by a “simple majority” of the voters.
Lobby Days
Lobby Days are opportunities for people to come to Olympia in groups for just what the name implies: to “lobby” their legislators. The very word conjures up notions of big spenders using under-handed means to get the votes of elected officials. A long list of pejorative expressions springs to mind at the very mention of the term: “arm-twisting,” “buying votes,” “back-door deals…” and worse. These days there’s also an mental association with the Abramoff scandals – even though that played out in Washington, DC, NOT Olympia, Washington.
But it helps to keep in mind that “lobbying” is just one form of “advocacy,” and the best short definition of advocacy is just: “Speaking Up.” We “speak up” all the time for our families, our friends, our co-workers. We sign a neighborhood petition, ask that a child be assigned to a different classroom, make a phone call to speak up for an elderly neighbor having trouble with her medicare …. All of that is advocacy.
It becomes lobbying when it involves “speaking up” to let our elected representatives know how we wish to be represented as they consider adding or changing laws, and deciding how to allocate taxes and public budgets. Lobbying is a legal right of everyone in a democracy like ours: individuals, groups large and small, for-profit businesses, and non-profit social services.
Some of those who “speak up” in Olympia are well-paid lobbyists, but many are not. Some of those who lobby for non-profit health and social services are paid, but non-profit salaries are generally lower than those in the for-profit sector. Plus, many non-profits (and smaller for-profit entities) cannot afford a full-time lobbyist. So they write contracts to pay for part of a lobbyist’s time – someone who puts together several small contracts that combine to make up an income. Not surprisingly, they are known as “contract lobbyists.”
Then there are all the ordinary people who come to Olympia, unpaid, with others who share a common concern for a Lobby Day. They want to make sure their issues are not lost among all the thousands of bills competing for our legislators’ attention. Lobby Day participants make appointments ahead of time, in order to meet directly with legislators or their staff and press their case for specific priority bills or budget items. Some Lobby Days also include a march or rally on the steps of the Capitol, complete with brief appearances by the Governor and other elected officials. Those are great opportunities to boost morale and at the same time make a show of strength – particularly if the issue or group is speaking for a group that is usually less visible, like older people with Alzheimers or children born with severe disabilities. (It isn’t necessary to come to Olympia to lobby. We also “lobby” every time we send our elected officials a message via phone, email or letter.)
Some Lobby Days are full of business people in power suits, or young parents pushing baby strollers. Others command attention because their participants all wear a common color or bright t-shirts – like the Service Employee International Union mental health workers who arrived in a veritable sea of purple t-shirts. On their Lobby Day, everyone knew they were there.
But big groups aren’t the only ones who come for a Lobby Day. Among this week’s first-time lobbyists were a couple dozen University of Washington and Seattle University students who spent their Martin Luther King celebration day off from classes to come to Olympia. Most had multiple purposes: to speak up for those not able to make the trip; to get appointments for a bigger, future Lobby Day; and mostly just to check the place out… see if it met their expectations, and fears. It was everything they’d been led to believe – and then some. Over and over they remarked on just how open, friendly, and accessible everyone was. And despite not having made appointments in advance, more than once they found themselves in brief conversations with legislators. A Representative came out from the House of Representative’s chamber in the Capitol Building (where legislators had just finished their own MLK Day commemorations) to talk with the students, and roughly 15 minutes later, in the Cherberg Building, a Senator who’d just finished listening to testimony (on the administration of the Employment Security Department) joined the students to answer their questions and hear about the issues they came to discuss.
One Lobby Day in particular would have given pause to anyone who thinks you have to be rich or powerful to have an impact in Olympia. Organized by the Statewide Poverty Action Network, it drew over 200 people from across the state – roughly three-fourths of them low-income people whose lives are directly affected by the issues they came to talk about: predatory payday loans, affordable housing, opportunity grants for low-income students, health care for all. Some of the participants are members of VOICES – an organization of, and by, low-income people. They spent hours on the road to come from Spokane, but it was important to them to make the effort. Just showing up to tell their stories can often have a powerful impact, a way to give life to the information in all those reports full of charts and graphs.
Like Bonnie – who came to talk about the human price low-income people pay when health care costs too much. She came all the way from Spokane, a crocheted skull-cap covering her almost-bald head. Bonnie’s finally getting radiation treatments for her cancer, but even though she knew she was sick it went undiagnosed for nearly a year. That happened because she couldn’t afford health insurance, so the tests she needed were repeatedly delayed and denied… until the cancer was far advanced. One result: both Bonnie and the clinic where she is now being treated are paying a far higher price than if she’d gotten care when she first fell ill. Sitting in her wheelchair, waiting for a march and rally to begin, she was greeting people and cracking jokes. “Laughter is one of the weapons I have left,” she said, “and if I can’t laugh at my cancer, I don’t know who can. But this shouldn’t happen to anyone… that’s what I came to say.”
THE PROCESS - Committees
Anyone who has ever tried to run a meeting knows how hard it can be if: a) there are a lot of people involved, and b) they are talkative types with healthy egos. So you can imagine that it wouldn’t make sense to try and run the legislature by having everything done in mass meetings of all 98 Representatives or 49 Senators.
Instead, legislators are each assigned to three or four Committees, and each of those Committees meets three times each week, for 2 hours at a time. So for starters, legislators are in the Committees they are assigned to for a minimum of 18 hours a week – not counting any smaller meetings with the staff or colleagues to prepare for a Public Hearing or get help in drafting a bill. That’s why Committees are known as the “work horses” of the legislature. It’s where much of the preliminary work is done on the 2,000 – 3,000 bills introduced each year.
Knowing about the schedule also helps explain why legislators are most likely to be knowledgeable about the bills and issues that come before the Committees they sit on, but may be quite uninformed about issues being dealt with elsewhere. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to get an in-depth understanding of all the many issues the legislature must address. That’s why it helps legislators enormously if constituents contact them to explain how particular proposals will affect people in their District.
A quick glance at the DAILY STATUS REPORT - which lists all the bills that have been introduced – makes the point. Among the first Senate bills one finds everything from condo conversions to taxes on zoos to Indian gaming and the Veterans’ cemetery. Among the first House bills introduced were some dealing with gun sales, payday loans, auto theft, at-risk youth, and energy policy. By the end of the week, 1,902 bills had been introduced in the Senate; 2,321 had been introduced in the House of Representatives.
Only about 10%-15% of those bills will become law. It is the job of the Committees to sort through all the many proposals, combine those that have elements in common, and reject those judged less-necessary. To make those hard choices, Committees use several devices.
Work Sessions and Public Hearings
During the first weeks of the Session many of the Committees fill a good part of their 2-hour meetings to Work Sessions. These are open to the public but the people speaking to the Committee are almost always pre-selected, and people in the audience do not get invited to speak. That’s because the Work Sessions are used almost like short classes – opportunities to help the new Committee members understand the issues they’ll be dealing with, or to bring everyone up-to-speed on complex issues requiring more explanation. E.g., next week the House Human Services Committee has scheduled a Work Session on Adolescent Brain Development, and the House Higher Education Committee has scheduled Work Sessions to provide an overview of Financial Aid programs – not your usual coffee cart conversations. Sometimes the people appearing at Work Sessions come with lengthy reports authorized by an earlier legislature – like the report of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Health Commission - and these days they may involve new media: Power Point presentations, or presentations by people in other states beamed in via Conference Call.
By next week there will be fewer Work Sessions. Instead, Committees will be devoting their time to Public Hearings, in order to get the reaction of their constituents to specific bills. Every bill that is introduced is assigned a number (starting with 1,2, or 3 for House bills; 5,6, or 7 for Senate bills), and referred to one of the 19 House and 14 Senate policy committees that focuses on the subject being addressed by the bill. Education-related bills get referred to an Education Committee; health-related bills get referred to a Health Committee; bills affecting the court system get referred to the Judiciary Committee; agriculture-related bills get referred to an Agriculture Committee.
Policy Committees
Each of these Policy Committees is likely to have anywhere from 6-9 members – though topics that everyone wants to address – like Education, or Transportation, have more (13, 17). These Committees have to decide whether the bill is a good idea from a policy perspective. And when they schedule a Public Hearing on a bill, anyone who shows up in Olympia can testify. On a table just inside the door to the Committee Room you’d easily find long sign-up sheets – for each bill being considered that day. Anyone can sign in, indicate whether they are “pro” or “con” on the bill, check the column for “Testify - Y/N” to show whether YES they wish to testify, or NO. Plus, they can indicate if they are part of a group that has a position on the bill, and can fill in their address and contact information (if they wish to).
Many Committee chairs will quickly summarize what those sign-in sheets contain: they’ll announce the number of people who’ve indicated they support the bill and the number who oppose the bill; some Committee Chairs will read the names of all the people/groups on those sheets. Often there will be a legislator from another Committee or the other body who wishes to make a brief statement about the bill. It is also common for someone from the government agency that would be expected to implement the bill to appear to answer questions and give the Committee information from their perspective.
And then the Committee Chair will invite to the witness table all the people who’ve indicated they wish to testify. Often they’ll ask the witnesses a couple of questions. If few people have signed up, they may ask whether anyone else present has anything to say… or they may take a generous amount of time with each witness. When dozens of people sign up to testify, the Chair may limit each to just a minute or two. There have even been times when the lines were so long that a Chair has had to plead with people to simply state their name, organization, and position on a bill. Just this week, for example, two retired social workers and an activist member of AARP who had never testified before, went to Olympia and signed in on House Bill 1008 – which was getting a Public Hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. They signed in early, sat in the front row, and got an opportunity to tell the Committee their views of the bill.
But whether there are large numbers or small eager to be heard, Public Hearings are a wonderful element of our citizen legislature. Ordinary people who are temporarily sitting as legislators, hear from other ordinary people who happen to have a stake in the bill that is being considered and wish to be heard. For those who cannot come in person, most of the Committees welcome testimony in the form of brief statements that are mailed, or emailed, to the Committee. All this information then becomes part of what the Senators and Representatives have available as they try to decide what to do about a bill.
Anyone can go to www.leg.wa.gov, click on Legislative Information Center, click on Legislative Documents, and then click on Calendars, Schedules, and Agendas. There you can see what each of the Committees has planned for the week ahead – the topics to be taken up in Work Sessions, which bills will get a Public Hearing, and more. Next week’s POLICY WATCH will describe what happens after the hearings have been held and the Committee members are ready to refine a bill, and bring it to a vote.
Oops. Week One of Policy Watch reported that two Republicans had been offered key Committee appointments. They were, but one has already decided to decline: Maureen Walsh, from Walla Walla, decided not to accept the position of Vice Chair of the Committee on Early Learning & Children’s Services. Tom Campbell (R-2) appears to be keeping his position as Chair of the new Select Committee on Environmental Health.
SOME ISSUES
By now over 2,000 bills have been introduced. POLICY WATCH only mentions a few of the many, many issues being taken up. To see a list of all the bills introduced to date, go to www.leg.wa.gov and at Bill Information, check the DAILY STATUS REPORT.
Education – all levels – continues to be a hot topic. This week the Higher Education Committee devoted a lively Work Session to the topic, especially the need for our community colleges and universities to have enough resources to produce the trained workforce required by our growing high-tech and related industries. Next week the same Committee will devote one Work Session to an overview of Financial Aid programs, and a second to the Higher Education elements of Washington Learns. In Week Three the Senate Ways & Means Committee will address the budget issues related to Higher Education and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education will devote two Work Sessions to Higher Education – including a look at Community and Technical College part-time faculty pay.
At the same time, attention continues to focus on early learning, both in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and in the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education, which will devote a Work Session to Thrive By Five, and also to a presentation on cultural relevancy in a preschool program.
Meanwhile teens are not being ignored. All three of this coming week’s Work Sessions in the House Committee on Early Learning & Children’s Services include elements concerning youth:
Children’s mental health (that same day also includes a Public Hearing on House Bill 1088 – to improve children’s mental health services), home visitation services for families, and a separate session on At-Risk Youth. In the House Health Care & Wellness Committee part of a Public Hearing will take up House Bill 1201 – which would allow Medicaid to continue for foster youth who reach 18 (to age 21), and the Senate Health & Long-Term Care Committee will hear the Senate version: SB 5305. Over in the Senate, the Human Services & Corrections Committee has scheduled a Public Hearing on SB 5266 – which concerns juveniles in custody of law enforcement officers. The House Human Services Committee will also devote half of one Work Session to Juvenile Justice.
Health Care remains a big topic. HB 1071 – which would provide health coverage for all children by 2010, and a similar bill in the Senate – SB 5093, will both get Public Hearings in their respective Health Committees next week. The House Bill has been scheduled and re-scheduled many times – in part because advocates have been working to try to increase the income eligibility limits in the bill. The delays in this case are not a bad sign, but rather a bit of evidence that this is a bill that is being taken very seriously, and all the stakeholders appear eager to try and work out differences early in the process.
The House Committee on Housing is devoting a good part of its time next week to bills concerning homelessness and/or ways to increase affordable housing.
By now there have been eleven bills introduced that address one or more aspect of campaign and/or election reform – included the public financing of campaigns (judges and others’), voluntary limits on campaign contributions, how we conduct primaries, and tamper-proof voting.
Brief Note. POLICY WATCH readers will want to read this bulletin with three things in mind. First, there is a vast array of topics considered by the legislature. We ask a lot of the men and women we elect to serve. We don’t have to like everything they do, but they deserve our respect. Second, every activity, every program, every issue at stake in the budget has its champions; legislators will be pressured from many sides on every item in the state budget. Speak up on the items that concern you. Third, it is our privilege to help our citizen-legislators sort among competing needs and make the difficult choices. If they are to represent us, they need to know how we wish to be represented. In a representative democracy, speaking up offers no guarantee of success; but there is an absolute guarantee that if you don’t speak up... you/your issue/the people you care about ... don’t stand a chance.
Because writing the two-year budget is the legislature’s major task this year, that task is this year’s ‘elephant in the middle of the room.’
SOME BUDGET-RELATED MEETINGS NEXT WEEK
On Wednesday, 1/24 at 3:30 pm, the HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE will hold a
Work Session highlighted by a staff briefing Long-term Care (a major budget item).
J.L. O’Brien Building – House Hearing Room A.
On Wednesday, 1/24 at 6:00 pm, the HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE on EDUCATION has scheduled a Work Session with three topics: an overview of Educational Service Districts, Higher Education (including the Governor’s budget request and Washington Learns), and connections with higher education and K-12 retention.
J.L. O’Brien Building – House Hearing Room A.
On Thursday, 1/25 at 3:30 pm, the HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE will hold Public Hearings on bills to create a Budget Stabilization Account.
J.L. O’Brien Building – House Hearing Room A.
On Thursday, 1/25 at 1:30 pm, the HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE on EDUCATION has scheduled a Work Session on Higher Education Enrollment and Access, and Community and Technical College part-time faculty pay.
On Tuesday, 1/23 at 3:30 pm, the SENATE WAYS & MEANS COMMITTEEE will hold a Public Hearing that combines Governor Gregoire’s 2007-09 Operating and Capital Budget Proposals. (This is likely to be a packed hearing, since it proposes to cover all of the many topics, in two of the state’s three budgets, in one 2-hour period.)
Cherberg Building -Senate Hearing Room 4 – Also on TVW.
On Wednesday, 1/24 at 1:30 pm, the SENATE WAYS & MEANS COMMITTEE will conduct a Work Session on Developmental Disabilities/Autism, and Offender Reentry Budget issues.
Cherberg Building - Senate Hearing Room 4.
On Thursday, 1/25, at 1:30 pm, the SENATE WAYS & MEANS COMMITTEE will conduct a Work Session on Higher Education budget issues. Senate Hearing Room 4 – Cherberg Bldg.
NOTE: On Wednesday, 1/24 at 1:30 pm, the HOUSE FINANCE COMMITTEE has scheduled a Work Session on performance measurement of tax preferences, including review of Tax Exemptions. Since tax exemptions represent foregone tax revenues, they have a direct impact on what is/is not available for the budget.
John L. O’Brien building – House Hearing Room C. Also on TVW
PART III
BILL NUMBERS:
House Bill numbers have four digits and begin with 1_ _ _ , 2_ _ _, or 3_ _ _;
Senate Bill numbers have four digits and begin with 5_ _ _, 6_ _ _, or 7 _ _ _.
Thus a bill identified as HB 1058 would be the 58th bill introduced in the House; SB 6264 is the 1,264th Senate Bill introduced in the session. More recent bills have higher numbers.
KEY DATES It is important to understand the Legislative Calendar.
The Legislative Session in Olympia runs from January 8 – April 22, 2007. Every day – including Saturdays, Sundays, and all holidays – is counted in setting the 105-day Session. The legislature may also be in session on weekends later in the Session. The “cut-off dates” below control the action on bills. Bills that fail to get the requisite action before “cut-off” usually die.
…here are critical points in the 2007 Session:
- 1/08 – 2007 Session begins.
- 2/28 – last day for bills to be considered in the Policy Committees of the House/Senate - where they originate (a.k.a. "house of origin")
- 3/5 – last day for bill consideration in the Fiscal Committee (House or Senate) where they originate
- 3/14 – last day for bills to be considered on the floor in their “house of origin”
- 3/30 – last day for bills consideration in the Policy Committees of the "opposite house"
- 4/02 – last day for bill consideration in the Fiscal Committees of the "opposite house"
- 4/13 – last day for bill to be considered on the floor of the opposite house
- 4/22 – 2005 Session adjourns for the year.