Washington State Legislative Session: Week 5 Update

Guest Contributor Brad Boswell of Boswell Consulting

We are now five weeks into the 2018 Legislative Session and it is shaping up to be one of the busiest in the history of short sessions. The first two deadlines—for bills to pass out of their policy and financial committees—are behind us, meaning many bills that were not voted out in time are now effectively dead. However, due to the extremely fast pace and Democratic control of both chambers, an unprecedented number of bills are alive and moving. Already, almost 300 bills have passed off the House and Senate floors combined, with many more to come before the next cutoff date, February 14th.

As far as content right now, we are seeing a high volume of labor policy, education, cannabis, and healthcare related bills. Notably, this week saw the passage of legislation that would allow out of state investment in marijuana businesses, increase transparency around prescription costs, and increase behavioral heath funding for institutions of higher education.

It will be interesting to see if the current trends and pace continue into next week as policymakers must now split their time between floor votes and public hearings on bills that have moved over from the other chamber.

A variety of distributed energy legislation is making its way through the process including HB 1233 related to distributed generation, and HB 2510 and SB 6081 concerning electrical net metering. HB 2580 and SB 6449 dealing with renewable natural gas are also continuing to move along. We expect a Senate Ways & Means hearing on SB 6203, the Gov. Inslee/Sen. Carlyle carbon tax, sometime next week.

Upcoming Hearings 

Technology & Economic Development (House) – HHR C, JLOB – 2/15 @ 1:30pm

• SB 6563 – Public Hearing – Reestablishing the sustainable aviation biofuels work group.

High Priority Bill Status