With 33 days of this year’s scheduled 105-day regular session behind them, state lawmakers are picking up the pace of legislative action on some of the more than 2,100 bills they have introduced so far.

The first deadline of the session is Friday, February 22nd. Bills that don’t make it out of committee by then are likely dead for this session.

Following cancellations caused by snow storms earlier this week, legislative committees resumed a full schedule of public hearings on dozens of bills, including a controversial proposal to exempt legislators from state public transparency laws (SB 5784). Open-government advocates, including Eastern Washington citizens who weighed in via remote testimony, strongly criticized the measure in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Government, Tribal Relations, and Elections on Wednesday. The committee took no action on the bill.