February 19, 2007

Well, we’re nearly halfway through the 2007 session. I recently moved back into the historic John A. Cherberg Building after it underwent an extensive remodel and restoration. We’re now on the second floor of the same building where Senate committee meetings are held. My view of the Capitol Building will be soon be obscured by the famous cherry tree blossoms that bloom every spring.

It’s a long session (105 days) this year, with the focus on crafting a two year budget for the state as well as considering a variety of policy issues. As you may know, we substantially increased the Democratic majority in the state Senate after the recent November election. With the Senate, the House, and the Governor all led by Democrats, we’re focusing on legislation that folks in our district seem most interested in—the environment; the education and well-being of our young people; and services for our most vulnerable.

Even though the Viaduct, NASCAR, and the Sonics seem to be grabbing the headlines, believe me, we’re doing more than that.

In the new committee that I chair, Senate Government Operations & Elections, we have twice as many bills to consider as the committee I chaired last year. We handle a wide variety of issues related to state and local government, veteran’s affairs, emergency preparedness, and elections.

So far, most of the controversy in Gov Ops has swirled around bills regarding the initiative process and “clean elections.” We’ll be passing a few bills to strengthen these processes. One bill I especially like is SB 5329, which requires political flyers to be archived. As a history buff and antique dealer, I like the idea of saving these documents for posterity, to give future generations some insight into how our elections are run.

We’ve also approved several veterans’ bills. We are trying to make the point that our feelings about the war in Iraq are separate from the support we offer the men and women serving abroad.

Here’s what’s been happening in other committees:

EDUCATION

The simple majority bill passed out of the Early Learning, K-12 Education Committee. At this point I hear we’re one vote short of the necessary 34 votes to pass it out of the Senate, so we’ll have to see what happens.

EARLY LEARNING

We’re looking at legislation related to the new Department of Early Learning. One program we’ll probably be seeing is a five-star voluntary rating system for child care centers and homes and early education programs. This will give parents information about the quality of child care and early education centers.

DOMESTIC PARTNER REGISTRY

Looks like we have enough votes to get this passed. This bill would create a registry for same-sex domestic partners (and heterosexual partners over the age of 62) to extend a few basic rights including automatic hospital visitation, inheritance rights if there is no will, and the right to make burial decisions. In no way does this resemble marriage, despite what some people think. There are several hundred other benefits that married folks automatically get that wouldn't be extended under this bill.

This bill came through my committee, and it is really clear to me how necessary this legislation is.

PBDEs

With an eye towards cleaning up the Puget Sound and reducing toxins in our environment, we’ll be voting on a bill to phase out the use of PBDE (a class of flame retardants). There is also a slate of “clean energy” bills that I hope will pass this year, as well as legislation to address global warming.

HEALTH CARE

On Valentine’s Day we passed a bill to improve access to health care services for children. Some 38,000 more children will become eligible for health coverage, helping us to reach our goal that all children in our state be covered by the year 2010.

There’s still a long way to go this session and many more bills to consider. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about a specific bill. I’ll check back with an update later in this session, which is scheduled to end April 22.

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