Senate will meet in Spokane

Sat., Jan. 28, 2006

Richard Roesler Staff writer

OLYMPIA – The state Senate’s decided to hit the road.

Reviving a long-dormant legislative tradition, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown wants the state Senate’s September committee days to be held not in Olympia, but in Spokane.

“The Legislature used to, as a matter of course, always go on the road” after the legislative session, Brown told a Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce delegation Thursday. “I think it’s a good tradition.”

As recently as the late 1980s or so, lawmakers would hold the two- to three-day rounds of hearings and meetings in places like Yakima and Spokane, according to longtime Senate staffer Brad Hendrickson. The idea was to get out of Olympia and take the public pulse far from the Capitol dome.

“Get ready,” Brown, D-Spokane, warned the chamber crowd. “Forty-nine senators, tons of lobbyists, staff, etc.”

Two senators – both from Western Washington – have proposed a bill that would move not just the Senate but the entire Legislature to Eastern Washington for those annual September meetings. Prime sponsor Sen. Jim Kastama, a Democrat from Puyallup, said he was moved to suggest the change after a series of trips to visit parts of Eastern Washington.

Regardless of that bill’s fate, however, Brown said she at least intends to bring the Senate. She said the Senate can do it within the existing budget.

House Speaker Frank Chopp called the proposal an interesting idea.

“It looks like a good idea,” Chopp said Friday, “but I need to talk to the tech people about the logistical issues.”

Local lawmakers, not surprisingly, are pleased.

“The more (lawmakers) we can get over here east of the mountains, the better we are,” said Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane Valley, who was in Spokane on Friday for a doctor’s appointment. “We want the West Side to know that there is an East Side and that our problems are a little dissimilar from theirs.”

Ideally, Sen. Bob Morton said, committees could meet at places affected by their decisions. He’d like the agriculture committee, for example, to meet in Ritzville and the natural resources committee to meet near the mine in Metaline Falls.

“They could really get some firsthand knowledge,” said Morton, R-Orient.

And then he had another idea.

“And the commerce committee,” he said, “could go over to Idaho and see how they operate. Meet on our competitors’ terrain.”

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