Session Notebook
Panel passes GOP transportation bill
The Republican plan to raise $2.4 billion for highways without boosting the gasoline tax heads for a Senate vote after barely clearing committee Tuesday night.
The measure, the centerpiece of the majority party’s agenda this session, cleared the Ways and Means Committee without a vote to spare. Sen. Shirley Winsley, R-Lakewood, one of three moderates who are skeptical about the plan, voted with a solid bloc of Democrats in opposition.
Senate Majority Leader Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, who defended the proposal from sharp criticism on the panel, told reporters the bill faces its final vote, the full Senate, as early as Friday.
The plan would give tax breaks and transportation funding with the $550 million in car-tax dollars that now go to the general fund and for local criminal justice every two years. The car-tax cut would be $40 a year, and new cars would cost less to license in the second year of ownership.
Bill would encourage gun safety
When Washington voters trounced a sweeping gun-control initiative last fall, they also may have doomed an effort by police officers to hold parents accountable if guns are stored within reach of children.
A House committee on Tuesday considered a bill that would encourage, but not require, gun owners to safely store their firearms.
The 6,000-member Washington State Council of Police Officers, whose opposition to Initiative 676 was crucial to its overwhelming defeat at the polls last fall, would like the Legislature to do more than just encourage safe storage, but it will be a tough battle.
The council, with assistance from King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng and Pierce County Prosecutor John Ladenburg, is pushing a newly drafted proposal to hold parents accountable if a child finds a gun and shoots someone or brandishes it at school, said to Mike Patrick, the council’s executive director.
It’s a watered-down version of a bill filed last year in memory of Whitney Graves, an 8-year-old Marysville girl who was killed in September 1996 when a playmate found his parents’ loaded gun. That measure was sponsored by Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island.
The main difference: Unlike last year’s bill, which required that guns be stored in a locked box or other secure space or be equipped with a trigger-locking device, the new version doesn’t specify how parents should store their guns.
Opponents debate research privacy measure
An animal rights activist and university researchers squared off Tuesday on a Senate bill that would keep research from greater public scrutiny.
Also entering the debate were representatives of the newspaper industry, who said current law is strong enough to protect the interests of both researchers and the public.
The bill, SB6642, would keep research data and procedures private until results are published, patented or otherwise shared publicly.
Opponents told the Senate Higher Education Committee such blanket protection goes too far. They also noted that state law already lets researchers keep their data and methods to themselves for five years if early disclosure would cause “private gain and public loss.”
An animal rights activist from the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) criticized the University of Washington for trying to carve its own special niche in existing law.
“Public policy grows best in the sunshine,” said Mitchell Fox, the group’s director of animal advocacy.
Hospital reports may be unsealed
The findings of hospital licensing inspectors would be open to the public under a measure about to be sent to the floor of the House.
But another portion of the bill, HB2963, would make secret certain information currently available to citizens.
The state Department of Health, which conducts licensing inspections of hospitals, is pushing for the right to release information obtained in the course of its inspections.
Currently, the department can’t even tell the public such mundane information as the number of beds in a particular hospital or the name of its director, said Patty Hayes, a spokeswoman.
Under the measure, sponsored by Health Committee Chairman Phil Dyer, R-Issaquah, the findings of licensing inspections or complaint investigations may be disclosed by the Health Department no sooner than three business days after the hospital has received the material generated by the inspection or complaint.
Roland Thompson, director of the Allied Daily Newspaper Association, noted that another section of the bill restricts information.
That section exempts from public disclosure the findings of “quality improvement committees” mandated by law to examine the workings of taxpayer-funded public hospitals. Those findings currently are subject to public disclosure.
“It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to do this at the same time that we’re trying to open more health care information to the public,” Thompson said.
Health department backers of the provision said it was inserted to give public hospitals the same rights as private, nonprofit hospitals, whose quality improvement committee findings are not subject to disclosure.
Abortion opponents focus on Senate
Abortion foes, already finding support in the state House, turned their attention to the Senate on Tuesday, looking for a ban on the procedure they call partial-birth abortion and a new requirement that parents be notified before a minor has an abortion.
House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, and Senate Majority Leader Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, told reporters both measures are likely to pass, but that votes still are being counted.
It’s probable that one or both will be sent to the voters, bypassing the governor’s desk, they said.
Democratic Gov. Gary Locke opposes both, calling them an erosion of abortion rights that state voters approved three times, including a 1991 measure that gave the force of state law to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Roe vs. Wade.
The measure dealing with “partial-birth” abortion generated by far the more emotional response at a hearing of the Senate Law & Justice Committee.
Foes of the procedure called it murder, infanticide, barbaric and horrific. One man likened it to Nazi mass killings.
But defenders said the bottom line is whether government should be interfering with a woman and her doctor as they make decisions - sometimes split-second decisions on whether the procedure is needed to save her life.
The measure, SB6530, sponsored by Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, and 16 colleagues, would make it a crime to perform such a procedure “except where necessary to save the life of the mother and no other medical procedure would suffice.”
Violation could carry a prison term of four years and a fine of $4,000 for the doctor.
xxxx LEGISLATIVE ALMANAC Highlights GOP leaders announced intentions to vote today on a bill banning gay marriages, and bypass the governor by sending it to the ballot in November. Some Democrats indicated they would rather vote to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Gary Locke to avoid a potentially messy campaign. A Senate committee heard testimony on bills that would ban the procedure that foes call partial-birth abortion and require that parents be notified before a minor can have an abortion. House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, and Senate Majority Leader Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, told reporters both measures are likely to pass, but votes still are being counted.
Days in session Tuesday was day 23 of the 60-day session.
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On the Internet http://www.wa.gov for the state of Washington’s home page. http://www.leg.wa.gov for the state-run Legislative Service Center.