3rd District Delegation to hold town hall meetings March 16th
With the legislative session halfway over, my seatmates (Rep. Marcus Riccelli & Rep. Timm Ormsby) and I will be holding two town hall meetings to hear from constituents and answer questions on Saturday, March 16th. Topics will include education, transportation, job creation, the state budget and anything else you want to talk about.
March 16, 10 AM – 11:30am
Shadle Park High School Auditorium
4327 N Ash St, Spokane
Northwest Neighborhood
March 16, 2 PM – 3:30pm
Emmanuel Family Life Center
631 S. Richard Allen Ct, Spokane
South Perry Neighborhood
We do our job of representing our community best when we hear directly from you. I encourage everyone to attend on of these town hall meeting.
TVW Capitol Classroom
Last week I participated in a program through TVW called Capitol Classroom. Students from Evergreen High School decided to support and follow SB 5389, a bill I prime sponsored that would guarantee sibling visitation rights for children in the foster care system.
The Capital Classroom program does an excellent job of engaging youth in civics, which is essential to the future of our democracy and makes excellent use of technology as part of that process. The students select a bill to follow and then support the legislation through a volunteer lobbyist, conversations with legislators, and visits to the Legislature to advocate for the bill in person. You can watch the segment HERE.
Next session, I am hoping we can get a school from Spokane to participate in the Capitol Classroom! If you know of a high school teacher that might be interested, please have them contact our office and we can get them in touch with TVW.
Budget Update
This Wednesday is the last day to consider policy bills in their house of origin. Next, we’ll focus more directly on the operating and transportation budgets.
The operating budget work typically does not pick up its intensity until the March revenue forecast since that is the revenue amount we will use when balancing the budget. Washington State is unique in this approach to revenue forecasting. The revenue forecast is nonpartisan and is used by both the executive and legislative branches in budget preparation. This year the revenue forecast is on March 20th and we’ll probably see the public roll out of budget proposals in the week or two afterwards.
Keeping In Touch
Please keep in touch with questions or comments at anytime. If you have feedback, I’d like to hear from you. You can reach me in Olympia by e-mail (andy.billig@leg.wa.gov) or by phone at 360-786-7604.
And if you know someone who would like to get their own copy of my weekly e-newsletter, tell them they can go to my website at http://www.senatedemocrats.wa.gov/senators/billig/ and click on the link to “Sign up for my e-newsletter” – I’ll be glad to keep them in the loop!
