E-Newsletters

Every year, the governor asks dozens of people from all over the state to serve on boards, commissions, and in agency leadership positions. These “gubers”, as they are affectionately called in Olympia, require the approval of the Senate with a simple majority vote just like regular legislation.

Regina Malveaux, the CEO of YWCA Spokane, was ...

Last week the Senate Facilities and Operations Committee (the committee that oversees the administration of the Senate) approved a plan I put forward in conjunction with Sen. Mike Padden to make the Senate’s remote testimony pilot project permanent and to expand it. The Washington State Senate is one of only a handful of legislative chambers in the country that ...

We are starting the third week of the legislative session and still very much in the committee phase when bills receive initial hearings to see if they have enough support to advance to the Senate floor for a full vote. There have already been 685 bills introduced in the Senate alone; 674 in the House. This is also ...

Happy New Year! The 2019 legislative session begins on January 14. In case you missed it, I explain more about my new role as Senate Majority Leader, our priorities for the session, and the Legislative Class of 2019 in this recent op-ed in the Spokesman Review.

Senate Majority Leader It has been an eventful couple of weeks with a momentous election that saw the Washington State Senate Democratic majority increase, followed by my colleagues in the Senate choosing me to become the new Senate Majority Leader. It is an honor to serve our state as Majority Leader. Of course, serving the constituents of the 3rd Legislative District will ...

While summer is the interim season between legislative sessions, there is still a lot of work to do. I use this time to prepare for the next legislative session, diving deeper into community issues, meeting with constituents and getting out to see our district in action. I Did the Time I recently met with Layne Pavey, founder of I Did the ...

The last day of the legislative session is called ‘Sine Die,’ Latin for ‘without day,’ because the Legislature adjourns without setting a day to reconvene. We started the session with the goal of finishing in 60 days and are on pace to accomplish that goal later today. Step 3 of ‘How a bill becomes a law’ This year, I introduced twelve prime-sponsored bills, and four ...

Staying alive We have now passed two cut-off dates, and the majority of bills that were introduced will not progress any further this session. Essentially, the legislative session is like a funnel. We started with nearly 4,000 bills introduced over 2017 and 2018 in both the House and Senate, but only about 600 will pass into law. The next cut-off is the "House ...

How a bill becomes law: Step 2 You may remember a few weeks ago, our team dropped SB 6345 in the hopper to start its legislative journey. In this week's installment, SB 6345, a bill to impose a 10-year moratorium on fracking in Washington state, received a hearing in the Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee. The hearing gave ...