E-Newsletters

It’s hard to believe, but we are now halfway through this 105-day legislative session. Tomorrow represents a big deadline with the “House of Origin” cut-off. All Senate bills not passed out of the Senate by 5 pm tomorrow are dead for this year unless they are directly related to the budget. Spokane Town Hall I hope you can join my seatmates and ...

Last Friday marked what is known around here as policy cutoff day. It is one of the first hurdles in the lifecycle of a bill becoming a law. At this point, any policy bill (non-budget related) that hasn’t been voted out of its policy committee will not continue through the legislative process this session. This week we will work on ...

Tele-Town Hall Last week, my seatmates and I hosted a tele-town hall. I hope you were able to participate and found the event to be informative. If you were not able to tune in, you can listen to the event in its entirety by clicking here. Stopping Foreign Money in elections Our bill, SB 5570, to prevent foreign-owned companies from contributing ...

We are now in the third week of this 105-day legislative session. In the Senate alone, there have already been over 300 new bills introduced since the beginning of session and many more are expected to be filed in the coming weeks. Here’s an update on some of the bills I have prime-sponsored.

Today marks the beginning of the 2017 legislative session and I am excited to get back to work. Throughout session, I will be sending newsletters like this one to keep you up to date on the issues we are tackling that directly affect you and Spokane. If you know someone who would like to receive their own copy of my weekly ...

Sine Die The Legislature is in the final hours of the legislative session. We have yet to pass a supplemental budget but I am optimistic we will have an agreement soon. It is likely that the Governor will call a special session so we can finish our budget work in the coming days. In this “short” session, we were able to make progress ...

The legislative session is scheduled to come to a close on Thursday. We are working to come to a final budget agreement before then and I will have a full budget update before the end of the week. I concur... In addition to budget negotiations, the next few days will be busy with concurrence votes. For bills that have passed the House ...

Thank you to everyone who attended our recent 3rd Legislative District town hall meeting. We had over 250 in attendance and I appreciated all the input on issues of importance to Spokane. It was a productive and substantive conversation. If you have any further comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Your feedback is essential as we ...

We are fast approaching another important legislative milestone. After 5pm today, any bill that hasn’t been passed out of their chamber of origin (House or Senate) will not continue to move forward this session, unless it is necessary to implement the budget. Here’s an update on some of the bills I have been focused on this session. Full funding of basic education Senate ...

We deserve better  We are halfway through the legislative session. At this point in the process, the action moves from the hearing rooms to the Senate floor as we hit high gear sending bills to the House, and vice versa. Unfortunately, our work on Friday was interrupted in a disturbing way. I often talk about the large degree of bipartisanship in the ...