Reply #54: FUSE legislative session summary 4/3/09 [View All]

[eridani]

The 2009 State legislative session has moved into its final quarter. There's less than a month left. We know the budget is a mess, but how is everything else going? Is it really a disaster on all fronts, or does it just seem like it?

In the past ten weeks, thousands of Fuse members have reached out to lawmakers in support of a number of important progressive bills - legislation aimed at reducing global warming pollution, cleaning up political campaigns, providing health care to all Washingtonians, improving consumer protections, and strengthening civil rights protections.

Here's the third-quarter score on the issues Fuse has been covering:

Budget

With a $9 billion deficit, lawmakers are trying to balance a budget that will take Washington through 2011. The Governor, the Senate, and the House have all proposed budgets balanced by cuts alone, and the consequences are frightening.1

The impacts of balancing the budget with cuts alone will be felt across the state - larger class sizes for our kids, thousands left without basic health care, and decreased funding for hospitals and nursing homes. The proposed cuts just go too deep. Tell your legislators we need a better solution.

Here at Fuse, we've been urging lawmakers to keep all options for reducing spending and raising revenue on the table.

(Give the Legislature your input by balancing the budget yourself at www.YouBudget.org.)

Global Warming

The Legislature's efforts on global warming have generally been a disaster; lawmakers are definitely fumbling the ball on reducing global warming pollution this year. Three bills and one voter-approved initiative to tackle global warming and build a clean energy economy have faced serious challenges this session.


The Governor's global warming bill (E2SSB 5735, formerly known as "Cap and Invest") has been drastically weakened and accomplishes very little in its current form. Some people now refer to it as the "and" bill, as both the "Cap" provisions and the "Invest" provisions have been removed. There is no hope for resurrecting this bill to its formerly ambitious state at this point.
The Transit-Oriented Communities bill (HB 1490) failed to make it out of either the House or Senate and is dead in its tracks. The bill would have promoted affordable, walkable communities connected by public transit and required cities, counties, and regions to begin planning for ways to improve transportation choices and reduce their global warming pollution.
As if these failures weren't enough, the Senate voted 27-21 to pass SB 5840 to roll back Initiative 937, the Clean Energy Initiative. Voters approved I-937 three years ago to ensure that 15% of the electricity from Washington's largest utilities comes from new renewable energy sources by 2020, and the Senate seriously weakened this law. The House has been unwilling to go along, and a compromise is now under consideration. The compromise proposal reduces the damage considerably (although it still weakens the Initiative), but adds a positive by including an extension of renewable energy tax credits.
This year's Efficiency First bills are the lone bright spot on the global warming front. SHB 1747 and SSB 5854 were overwhelmingly passed by their respective chambers. These companion bills strengthen energy codes. They allow for energy efficiency policy planning and mandate commercial building efficiency performance scores, studies of efficiency scores for residential buildings, and efficiency standards for public buildings. The Legislature is expected to adopt a version that reconciles the differences.

Clean Elections and Good Government

SB 6035 is a piece of good news in this year's legislative session. It tackles one of the biggest rip-offs in Washington - a loophole that allows conservative business associations to divert funds from a State workers compensation program into attack ads. Washington's biggest and most conservative trade association - the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) - diverted nearly $7 million into attack ads last year alone. They skim the money from workers compensation refunds owed to employers - businesses that need their hard-earned money to maintain and create jobs.

SB 6035 fixes this problem by requiring the Department of Labor and Industries to institute greater transparency and stronger accountability in the State workers compensation insurance program. It calls for restrictions on the use of workers compensation funds by trade associations that manage the program's workplace safety rebate, called Retro, stopping them from using State dollars for political purposes. Conservative business associations are pulling out all the stops to kill this bill. SB 6035 squeaked through the Senate with one vote and can pass the House if the public demands it!

Equal Rights

Equal rights is another bright spot in this year's legislative session. SB 5688 is a further expansion of the Domestic Partnership registry established in 2007 and expanded again in 2008. SB 5688 is likely to succeed despite strong opposition from conservatives. When enacted into law registered domestic partners will have over 400 legal protections under state law, but still none of the over 1,100 federal protections of marriage. It's not marriage equality but it is meaningful protection.

SB 5688 passed the Senate 30-18. A public hearing on the bill is scheduled in the House Committee on Ways & Means at 1:30 p.m. Monday, April 6.

Consumer Protection

Predatory Lending

In Washington State right now it's actually legal to make small dollar loans that work as paycheck advances with interest rates up to 2,700%! An average payday loan borrower repays a whopping $827 to borrow $339.

Passage of ESHB 1709 would reduce these predatory payday loans by giving borrowers more options and time to repay loans and by limiting the number of loans one person can accrue. The bill offers immediate access to a 90-day or 180-day repayment plan - far better than current law provides. This is the furthest lawmakers have ever gotten in the fight against predatory lending. In the past 4 years, similar bills to protect consumers never even made it out of committee. ESHB 1709 passed out of the house and was voted out of Senate committee on March 30th. The full Senate must vote on the bill by April 17.

Homeowner Bill of Rights

The Senate has passed SB 5895, the 2009 version of a Homeowner's Bill of Rights by a very narrow vote (25 to 24). At the heart of SB 5895 is a warranty that requires builders to stand behind their work for several years, giving buyers of new single family homes the assurance that if a defect is discovered, the builder will be coming back to fix it. SB 5895 was heard in the House Judiciary Committee in mid-March. For this bill to still have a chance at becoming law it has to be voted out of committee by Monday April 6.

Consumer Protection Act

SHB 1683/SSB 5531, an update to the State's Consumer Protection Act, makes sure consistent standards are applied for all Washingtonians and increases the damage limits available to consumers who win their case in both district and superior courts.

Workers' Rights

It's been a tough year for workers rights in the Legislature, best illustrated by the fate of the Worker Privacy Act (SB 5446) which sought to give employees the option of not attending employer meetings about how to vote, how to worship, whether to support a union, or other matters of individual conscience. Under heavy pressure to kill the bill from Boeing and other businesses, legislative leadership used an email from the State Labor Council as an excuse to kill the bill, and even requested a widely panned State Patrol investigation into the email message. The State Patrol quickly concluded that no laws had been broken, but the bill is still dead.2

Health Care

SSB 5945, a measure that would make it a goal to provide health care coverage to all Washingtonians by 2012, passed the Senate. The budget crisis precludes a more aggressive approach this year. The bill was heard in the House Committee on Health & Human Services Appropriations earlier this week. The committee must refer it on to the House Rules committee by April 6.

Take Action

So it's been a challenging and ambitious legislative session. Some critical bills have fumbled and some are in the end zone. In this last month of the session, it's up to us. Use our email letter writing tool to tell your legislators how you feel about the current slate of progressive legislation and keep moving forward!

Click here to write a letter:

http://www.fusewashington.org/page/speakout/stateleg

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Grenetz, Fuse


1State Senate budget plan would rescind gains by Andrew Garber; published Seattle Times March 31, 2009: (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008952196_budget31m.html )

2The "Neverending Saga" of worker privacy bill by David Goldstein published on Horsesass.org March 18. 2009: http://horsesass.org/?p=14130