BIAW Bulletin – Policy Cutoff Edition

February 16, 2021

Hello and welcome to another BIAW Bulletin … but what you and I know as “The Hammer with Himebaugh.”

Policy committee cutoff is today which means policy bills need to be out of their policy committees by today otherwise they’re considered “dead” but no bill is really dead until Sine Die.

There’s 69 days until Sine Die… not that anyone is counting, least of all me…

And as we progress, we’re getting closer to real budget discussions and that means taxes and what our state’s biennial budget is going to look like.

We’ll let you know how those conversations progress as we continue to move along. But for now, here’s a status update on some of the bills we care about.

Virtually, nothing is dead… it’s all still alive or slated to get out of its policy committee today.

Bad bills still alive

That’s all this stuff like:

• landlord tenant junk,
• qui tam,
• low carbon fuel standards,
• attacks on vesting,
• presumption of workplace COVID,
• banning natural gas and increasing the energy code,
• climate change and net ecological gain in GMA,
• wage liens,
• environmental justice,
• capital gains income taxes,
• councilmatic tax authority, and
• hikes in property taxes…

All still alive.

On the positive side

A few things on the positive side:

The kind of sort of unemployment relief bill 5061, the first bill of session, has been signed by the governor – this will ensure your UI tax hike, while still an increase –isn’t as much as it would be.

More work on UI relief is still needed, this year.

And a few bills around limited areas of more intensive rural development in both the House and Senate have made it past their policy committees.

And our bills to ensure better permitting processes inspired a workgroup to force the conversation with local governments.

Also, a bill to address small condo development 5024 passed out of the senate and is waiting for a hearing in the house policy committee – which probably won’t happen until after house of origin cutoff.

Stay connected

Continue to stay up to date by reading the Lawmaker Review email on Mondays, following us on Facebook and checking out our blog. And keep signing up for those hearings. We really do appreciate it and it makes a different.

Finally, thank you for watching another wonderful edition of “The Hammer with Himebaugh.” Homes start here.

Himebaugh out…