After a three-hour hearing Monday on competing proposals to change the way the state funds basic education, the House Committee on Appropriations met in executive session on Thursday and approved HB 1843, the House Democrats’ proposal.

Work on the education issue has moved behind the scenes for now, but lawmakers will resume their efforts in earnest after the first policy cutoff deadline next Friday, February 17th.

Agreement on how much the state should spend on education funding and what reforms lawmakers should enact, if any, is still a long way off. Legislators also have hundreds of other issues before them in this scheduled 105-day regular session.

To date, 2,193 bills, memorials, and resolutions have been introduced in both chambers ahead of next Friday’s cutoff deadline. On that day bills must be acted upon on by non-fiscal or transportation committees in their house of origin. Thereafter, the vast majority of measures are technically “dead” for the session, but they can be brought up again for consideration by a procedural vote of the membership, or if they are considered to have an effect on state budget matters.

The volume of measures introduced this year is on track with prior sessions in odd-numbered years. Lawmakers introduced 2,365 measures in 2015, adding another 1,251 bills during the 2016 session. Of these, 363 were enacted into law in 2015 and another 270 in 2016, less than 18 per cent of the total number of introductions.

So far, only one bill has passed both houses of the legislature, SB 5079, to allow for the practice of dental health therapists on tribal reservations. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and by an 80-18 vote in the House. In all, the House has passed and sent 29 measures to the Senate, while the Senate has sent 10 bills to the House. Most of these passed unanimously or by large majorities in their respective chambers. Exceptions are HB 1059, to delay a promised property tax cut, and SB 5607, proposing basic education funding and policy changes, each of which passed along narrow party lines.

Among the more controversial measures this session is SB5692, which would make Washington a “right-to-work” state by ending the practice of forcing workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. The Senate Commerce, Labor and Sports Committee heard testimony on the bill Wednesday, often loudly interrupted by some 700 labor union advocates bussed in to lobby legislators and voice their opposition to SB 5692.

The issue is timely, as Missouri became the 28th state to pass a right-to-work law this week, allowing workers in that state to choose not to join a union and still keep their jobs.
For a more detailed and informative discussion of this issue, please see the latest blog by WPC’s Director of the Center for Small Business Erin Shannon here. 

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