Today at 5 p.m. is opposite house cutoff – that’s the deadline to pass House bills out of the Senate and Senate bills out of the House. Initiatives, bills that are necessary to implement the budget, and bills that have differences between the two chambers are exempted from this rule.

I encourage you to tune in to the floor debate on TVW. You can watch the action live or navigate their extensive archive.

We’re less than one week before the constitutional deadline for regular session: March 7th. A lot could happen between now and then, and so I’ll do my best to keep you apprised of the important developments in Olympia.

Update on the initiatives

Legislative Democrats held public hearings on three of the six voter-backed initiatives this week. The initiatives were signed by over 800,000 Washingtonians and we saw overwhelming public support for all three during the hearings.

All three initiatives were voted out of committee this morning and are likely to come up for a vote before the Legislature adjourns sine die.

• Initiative 2113 would fully restore the ability of law enforcement officers to engage in vehicular pursuit.
• Initiative 2081 would establish a parental bill of rights, so that parents would have authority over their child’s school and medical records.
• Initiative 2111 would prohibit state and local personal income taxes in Washington state.

If the Legislature adopts an initiative as submitted, it becomes law.

Sadly, the majority party chose not to hold public hearings on the three remaining initiatives. 

• Initiative 2124 would allow people to opt out of the new state-run, long-term-care program.
• Initiative 2117 would repeal the Climate Commitment Act, the state’s new carbon tax program.
• Initiative 2109 would repeal the state’s new capital gains tax.  

If all six initiatives were to come up for a vote today, I would happily hit the green button and approve each one. The three initiatives that were not considered by the Legislature will go to the people for an up or down vote in November.

Good news

There were several bad bills this session that are now considered to be dead, including:

• House Bill 2114 (rent control)
• Senate Bill 5770 (property tax increase)
• House Bill 2030 (allowing convicts to vote, serve as a juror, and run for office from jail)
• House Bill 1268 (reducing criminal penalties for gun and gang crimes near schools and bus stops)

The erosion of local control over election security

One of the bad bills that did, unfortunately, pass this session was Senate Bill 5843. This is the latest effort to erode local control of elections. The measure would require every county to install and maintain an intrusion detection system to monitor their network and to disclose certain malicious activity or breaches of security of information technology systems.

Election integrity is fundamental to trust in our political process. It’s never a good idea for government to prescribe a single solution to a technical problem. That’s a recipe for negative unintended consequences down the road.

On the House floor, I voted against this bad policy change and fought to amend some of its worst features. My amendments were not adopted and the House passed the bill 58-37.

Linking Washington’s carbon market up with California and Quebec

Yesterday, the House voted 57-39 to pass Senate Bill 6058, which would link Washington’s cap-and-trade carbon market with the California-Quebec carbon market.

This is a bad idea that will cost you even more at the pump and on your utility bills. California has higher fuel prices, higher housing costs, and higher electricity costs than we do. We don’t want to follow them down this road, and I strongly urged the House to vote this bill down.

Rep. Leonard Christian stands up for children in drug abusing households

Senate Bill 6109 would require courts to give great weight to the lethality of and public heath guidance from the Department of Health (DOH) regarding high-potency synthetic opioids during certain stages of child welfare proceedings where the court is determining whether a child should be removed from a parent.

I shared my childhood experience in a floor speech on an amendment that aimed to save more children by removing them from homes where hard drugs are present until their parents could prove the children were safe.

Resources for those affected by the recent wildfires

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is now offering low-interest federal disaster loans to businesses and residents affected by the recent wildfires:

“Businesses of all sizes and private nonprofit organizations may borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory and other business assets. SBA can also lend additional funds to businesses and homeowners to help with the cost of improvements to protect, prevent or minimize the same type of disaster damage from occurring in the future.”

You can learn more about the program here.

To apply, contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency at www.disasterassistance.gov.

It’s an honor to serve you

Please contact me if you have any questions, concerns, or comments. I am here to serve you and everyone in the 4th Legislative District.

It is an honor to serve you.

Sincerely,