Bill defines counselor credentials

Tired of your job? You, too, can be a registered counselor.

But you’d better hurry.

Washington is nearly unique in allowing people to sign up with the state as “registered counselors” a professional designation that requires virtually no training.

“All it takes here is $40 and a four-hour AIDS-awareness class and you can hang out your shingle,” says state Rep. Don Barlow, D-Spokane.

That’s not much protection for patients, he said. The state has far more stringent credentialing standards for marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors and psychologists. (Barlow is a licensed mental-health counselor.)

His House Bill 2674 would set up two new categories of registered counselors: “agency-affiliated counselors” and “limited professional counselors.” Those working on their own would have to consult with a licensed professional, treat only certain patients, and meet educational standards. Among the backers: Gov. Chris Gregoire.

A similar proposal from Barlow failed last year in the face of complaints that registered counselors were being railroaded out of the profession and that their patients would suffer. Many said they have far more education and experience than the state rules require.

Barlow says his goal remains the same: encouraging people “to move toward a more professional footing, if they want to stay in the profession.”

Battling attorneys

It’s going to be an interesting election year, and not just the races for president and governor.

After much hinting, Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, a Democrat, last week opened his campaign for state attorney general with a salvo against incumbent Republican Rob McKenna.

“Four years ago, voters rolled the dice on a partisan, ambitious politician who had never tried a case,” Ladenburg’s campaign announcement began. He blasted McKenna as a public relations machine who’s soft on consumer protection. He also suggested that McKenna wouldn’t defend abortion rights if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

McKenna fired back, decrying the criticism as “baseless attacks.”

He said he’s helped curtail identity theft, and touted a long list of anticrime and consumer-protection efforts, including sex offender laws and a nationwide predatory lending settlement.

As for Roe v. Wade, McKenna said he’ll always defend state laws, particularly those passed by voters. In 1991, Washingtonians approved Initiative 120, writing the Roe v. Wade ruling into state law.

A bill of rights for the flying public?

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, both headquartered in Puget Sound, are trying to put the brakes on Senate Bill 6269, a passengers’-rights bill.

Patterned on a New York law, the bill would require drinks, food and medical care for passengers stranded in a plane on the tarmac for three hours or more. Also on the list: fresh air and waste removal.

The bill would also create a consumer advocate to help resolve consumer complaints with airlines. But lawmakers have stripped out provisions that would have required compensation for long delays and a published monthly list of delayed flights.

Dan Coyne, a lobbyist for Alaska and Horizon, said the long delays are not a problem in Washington.

“In our recollection … we do not know of one incident where people have been stuck in an airplane for three hours or more in the state of Washington,” he said at a recent hearing. “It just hasn’t happened.”

“So if it passed, it wouldn’t hurt you, huh?” said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

True, Coyne responded. But he said the bill would send a message to airlines “as to how they might be valued as a corporate citizen.”

‘A dying patient can’t choose life’

Ask proponents what their Death With Dignity initiative is about and they’d probably agree with the state attorney general’s office that it’s about the right of terminally ill people to “self-administer lethal medication.”

Foes, however, have a shorter description for it: “Suicide.”

With the ink barely dry on the AG’s proposed ballot language for Initiative 1000, critics are going to court to challenge the wording that voters would see.

“The title strains to avoid using the term ‘assisted suicide’ when that is clearly what the initiative is about,” says Duane French, with the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide.

Proponents argue that it’s not suicide when a terminally ill person uses a prescription to hasten death. When they filed Initiative 1000 last month, they handed out a pre-emptive white paper titled “It’s Not Suicide.”

The term “conjures images of irrational, depressed teenagers, adults with mental illness and terrorist bombers,” it read. “It suggests guns and violence. It suggests the patient is choosing death over life. But the fact is a dying patient can’t choose life.”

A Thurston County judge will sort this out next week.

Budget writers starting to sweat

Tomorrow afternoon, Washington’s economic weather forecasters will give their best guess for how the state treasury looks in the coming months and years.

If it’s bad news – and lawmakers are bracing for that – it could put a crimp in the hopes of a lot of lawmakers with pet projects they’d like to see funded this year. Gov. Chris Gregoire has called for a small budget this year that leaves $1.2 billion in savings; lawmakers say they’re shooting for $1 billion.

Gregoire on Monday said that her goal remains $1.2 billion in the bank.

But depending on how the revenue forecast looks, she said, “I may have to revisit that.”