It’S Halftime, But Legislators Barely Breaking A Sweat Outlook Is Unclear For Key Bills; Observers Predict Another Late Rush

Like gardeners sowing seeds in the dirt, lawmakers have blanketed the Capitol with bills again this year, filing 2,264 as of Wednesday.

Yet as legislators today reach the midway point of their 105-day session, no one can say which - if any - might bloom into law.

Even this week’s cut-off for House and Senate committees to move bills forward or let them die does little to clear up what’s still possible and what’s not.

So it goes in the odd biosphere of the Legislature, where “to die” doesn’t mean forever, momentum shifts faster than wind and the only true deadline is the one that sends everyone home. In this unnatural-seeming world, anything can be revived at the last minute, and most important decisions are delayed until the end.

“Right now, everything is dead,” said Rep. Dave Mastin, R-Walla Walla, smiling faintly. “And everything’s still alive.”

The most difficult task of this year’s session - compiling a $20 billion-plus budget for the next two years - is barely under way. Before making decisions on that budget, lawmakers are waiting until a March 18 revenue forecast, which will detail more precisely how much there is to spend.

Meanwhile, policy issues - what to do about declining salmon runs, how big a raise to give teachers, whether Spokane will get the authority to build a convention center - are moving, but also hinge on those spending decisions.

Besides, postponing major action allows lawmakers to horse-trade at session’s end, when it’s more clear who wants what - and how badly.

“It’s hard to get the big things off the table early,” said Marlin Appelwick, a former House Democratic leader who is now an Appeals Court judge. “I often wanted to get moving quicker, but that’s not the way the place percolates.”

And that’s in a normal year. This time, with Republicans and Democrats sharing power in the House, things are moving even slower, as lawmakers eye one another like gamblers in a saloon.

“It’s more deliberative this year,” said Sen. Larry Sheahan, R-Spokane. “There’s more caution. If there’s even a possibility that a bill might cause something bad to happen, we’re just not doing it.”

To date, the Senate has made the most significant moves.

Senators have passed two small fill-in budgets, voted to repeal an anti-cougar hunting initiative and agreed to earmark a multimillion dollar tobacco settlement for health care and anti-smoking programs.

The House, meanwhile, has passed some 40 minor bills, ranging from technical changes in law to a property tax exemption for three tiny community radio stations.

The fact that neither chamber has taken action on the other’s bills - while not unusual at this stage - has some lawmakers edgy.

The Democrat-led Senate, hoping to show divided government could work, quickly passed a supplemental budget in January, which earmarked roughly $2 million for county fairs, some of which start in the spring. Most Senate Republicans voted for it.

But House Republicans took issue with other elements of the interim spending plan, and saw no rush to pass it. Instead, they proposed a separate measure to fund county fairs. That was held up by House Democrats, who said fair funding belongs in the supplemental budget, which would get the money out sooner.

“It’s sad that fairs are wrapped up in politics,” said Mastin, a Republican floor leader.

“The fair thing is ridiculous,” said Rep. Huns Dunshee, D-Snohomish, and a co-chair of the House Finance Committee.

Even so, by most accounts, working relationships remain good - even in the House. But it’s not without frustration.

“I had people yelling at me all day because their bills weren’t moving,” Dunshee said Wednesday. It was especially hard to hear when some of those bills were held up by his Republican co-chair, he said.

Still, most action has occurred in 19 House committees, where the number of bills were pared this week to about 400, and the 16 Senate committees, where it’s not yet clear how many bills survived.

Other measures wending their way through the legislative process deal with school safety, insurance coverage for contraceptives, concealed pistol permits, Jet Skis and other personal watercraft, competition for local telephone service, the “millennium bug,” drunken driving and changing the date of the primary election.

Bills now on the exit pile include a proposal to send newly released prisoners back to the county where they were convicted, and a complex plan to reorganize health insurance for people not covered by employer plans.

But it’s difficult to gauge what will remain on the trash heap.

The prison proposal is not expected to resurface, because not enough people in power liked the idea.

But if lawmakers and insurance industry representatives find a more workable solution to the health insurance crisis, legislators expect to draft a bill, bypass the committee process and put it to a vote.

In the House, a cache of proposals to boost economic development in the state’s rural areas never left their committee, but leaders already are working on new drafts to replace them.

Yet, a bi-partisan proposal that would make it a crime to store a gun where a child might gain access to it was squashed in the House by a Republican, and in the Senate by a Democrat. Several lawmakers said the Whitney Graves measure is not likely to surface again.

But, Mastin added, that doesn’t mean it won’t.

“Only a fool predicts,” he said.