Industry Lobbyists Help In Drafting Bills Insurance, Electrical Groups Behind House Bills

There’s good reason why some insurance bills moving through the Legislature so closely reflect the industry’s concerns.

Insurance lobbyists helped write them.

And it’s no surprise that a House bill to deregulate the electric utility industry contained the views of some of the largest corporations in Washington and Oregon.

“I let them draft it,” said Rep. Larry Crouse, R-Spokane, referring to the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities, a coalition of large corporate electricity buyers.

“I think it’s good when I take an industry bill. It’s a great starting point. They have a lot of expertise. Then it’s my job to go through it and use all of it, some of it, or none of it.”

Crouse, chairman of the House Energy and Utilities Committee, said he also invited citizen and consumer groups to draft chunks of the electricity deregulation bill.

He held weeks of hearings to give everyone a chance to be heard.

In the end, Crouse decided to let his bill die this session. He’s pushing for a study commission that would review all deregulation issues.

A separate deregulation bill is pending in the Senate.

Industry lobbyists are participating more and more in writing legislation.

Basil Badley, one of Olympia’s top insurance lobbyists, said he frequently provides the language he would like to see in bills as a starting point in negotiations.

“I’ll give them a draft and say this is what I want. We tell them it’s model legislation.”

John Conniff, deputy insurance commissioner, said industry lobbyists play more of a role in the drafting process than they used to.

“They always had influence,” said Conniff, who used to work as an attorney for legislative committees handling insurance bills. “They would bring their own language. Or the chairman would bring me their work. But I would draft it.

“Now they are writing it and the staff and the rest of the public are reacting. It’s a new paradigm.”

Drafting bill language is just one more piece of access ordinary citizens don’t have in the legislative process, Conniff said.

“If you are not at the table at the initial draft, you are always playing catch-up. Behind the curve.”

Two Spokane Democrats new to the legislative process have found the spectacle of corporate lobbyists drafting amendments and bills a bit shocking.

“It makes you wonder if they know how this is looking,” said Rep. Alex Wood, D-Spokane, who is serving his first term.

“It’s surprising that to a certain extent some of it is pretty blatant,” said Rep. Jeff Gombosky, D-Spokane, another freshman.

Edward Seeberger, a former research director for the Senate, studied the origins of more than 550 bills that passed Senate committees in 1995. He discovered 22 percent of them came from business lobbyists, 3 percent from labor, 3 percent from education advocates and 14 percent from legislators.

The ideas behind more than half of the bills came from government.

Only lawmakers may sponsor and introduce bills. But there’s no restriction on who may originate the concept or language of a bill.

No matter who drafts them, all bills are written up in proper form by the code reviser’s office. Then lawmakers begin the process of hearing, amending, adopting and killing bills.

Rep. Phil Dyer, R-Issaquah, chairman of the House Health Care Committee, said it’s sensible to bring industry into the drafting process.

“They have to agree. I mean clearly you are not going to work in a vacuum. There isn’t an industry down here that doesn’t get involved in setting the premise of every piece of legislation.” , DataTimes