This morning, the House re-passed a bill that would allow certain child care workers the right to unionize.
The arguments summed up: Reps. Pettigrew and Goodman (and others) said allowing child care workers to unionize will increase the reimbursement rate so that it more closely reflects the costs of providing child care. They each said that would, in turn, improve the level of care and, for that reason, the bill is an important part of early childhood education and closing the achievement gap before it opens up.
But Reps. Anderson, Condotta and Chandler (among others) said the bill would only lead to the state having less control over its own budget. Rep. Condotta said the experiment of allowing state workers to unionize was coming to an end because it has only lead to more unsustainable budgets over time.
I’ll post the whole debate in a bit when it’s available.
Right now, the House is debating the bill The House just passed a bill to limit bonuses for state workers.
Rep. Larry Seaquist opened the debate for HB 2998 by saying that last year alone, 9,000 state workers received “incentive payments” — or bonuses based on their performance. That’s out of 65,000 workers, he said, and includes 4,500 in the Washington Management Services.
Seaquist said the bill will “continue to encourage the agencies to recognize performance with non-cash incentives” and allow cash awards to employees who come up with money-saving ideas.
Rep. Mike Armstrong said those bonuses amounted to $1.9 million.
This morning, the Senate Health Care committee considered a bill that would require “crisis pregnancy centers” to stick to dispensing scientific facts.
Crisis pregnancy centers, according to the bill report, are often run by religious organizations. They provide pregnancy tests, but do not provide medical care or referrals to medical care. “There is concern these facilities may not be fully disclosing their anti-abortion focus,” says the bill report. And: There is concern that the centers are providing false or misleading information to pregnant women, the report continues.
Here is the bill digest. Here’s the companion bill in the House, which hasn’t been scheduled for a hearing. I’ll update this post as soon as I listen to some of the testimony.
Update: Below you can find the video. Here’s a bit of what people had to say:
Sen. Rodney Tom: “It really is a pretty simple bill … One, if there are test results that those results be communicated immediately,” he said. He said there have been cases where pregnancy test results haven’t been shared with the woman for a week or more. He said the second goal is that any health information dispensed be “medically accurate” which is the same standard for schools. “What this bill doesn’t do is, we’re not trying to close these places. We’re not trying to restrict their First Amendment rights,” he said. “What they can’t do is try to use scare tactics … like saying if you have an abortion you’re going to have increased ovarian cancer chance.”
Sen. Joe Zarelli: “We need to first recognize that what we’re talking about are organizations that are religious in nature,” he said — and they’re expressing their religious views on abortion. He said restricting what the centers are able to say to patients would be like restricting what a pastor can tell his congregation. He also said the centers do not rely on a “single dollar” of public money. “If we talk about the issue of choice … then it would be pure hypocrisy in my mind to eliminate one of those options that women have… and leave them with only one source,” which would be nonreligious clinics that provide abortions, he said. The crowd clapped when he was finished speaking.
Washington is already required to take down your information if you buy cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine — like Sudafed. But a bill being considered now by the House Health Care Committee (and aired live on TVW now) would require the Attorney General’s office to create a real-time database. That way, pharmacists would be able to see if someone is attempting to purchase more than two boxes of cold medicine in a day. And then they can deny the sale.
Rep. Tom Campbell, the bill’s sponsor, said this will be paid for by the drug manufacturers — and won’t cost pharmacies or the state extra. “It makes good sense” he said, to avoid “smurfing.”
“We currently have written logs … it’s cumbersome for the consumer and it’s cumbersome for us,” said Don Pierce with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. “We believe this is an excellent opportunity to fight meth.”
Alan Segal with the Consumer Health Products Association said the drug companies are paying for it because they got together and realized they needed to be part of the solution. So: For any state that passes a law requiring real-time tracking, they’ll foot the bill. He said the retailers will never have access to the information in the logs for marketing purposes.
I’m watching the press conference on job creation that the Senate Democrats held at lunchtime. It will be posted to TVW later today. One thing that has caught my ear: Sen. Chris Marr said construction estimates are coming in under what’s been budgeted.
“And I mean significantly under. Just as an example, a week ago we found out the Snoqualmie Pass project that was originally estimated at $110 million is coming in at $76 million — $34 million will fund a lot of other projects,” he said. “So, in this environment we can fund more Tier 2 projects as well.”
Sen. Derek Kilmer talked about one of the Senate Democrats’ plan to retrain about 6,000 workers. “The challenge we have is this: If you look at the demand for worker retraining, the trend line is directly proportionate to rising unemployment. So as unemployment goes up, the demand for worker retraining goes up,” he said, which can overwhelm community and technical colleges. Edmonds Community College, for example, has a waiting list of 200 people. “Our current budget funds about 6,200 of these worker retraining slots,” he said, and the colleges “through a rather Herculean effort” are serving about 9,000. The Senate bill would fund another 6,000 slots.
“My son, Aaron Sullivan, was killed in July by an assault weapon. He was killed by another young man, a 19-year-old. My feeling on this is that we have laws that protect our children from tobacco and narcotics and alcohol and we determine when they can drive and when they can vote,” said Dr. Deborah Sullivan. She added that she would like to see that same protection to keep assault weapons “out of the hands of our most vulnerable young people.”
Brian Judy, Washington state liaison for the National Rifle Association: “In this day and age of 24 hour news, I want to give you a bit of breaking news … 70 million gun owners didn’t break the law today.” He said the bill is unconstitutional, arbitrary and will not reduce crime. “You can ban all semi-automatic firearms or you can ban none of them,” he said — you can’t ban a subset of semi-automatics because it will only lead to confusion and more people purchasing them.
10:38 a.m. Bill Pierce, concerned citizen: Said Sen. Adam Kline was “sitting there in smugness and arrogance” and that Kline’s position in support of abortion killed far more people than assault rifles. He said he became a member of the NRA at age 15, and that his father told him at the time that people would “stay up day and night” thinking of ways to take away his rights.
10:40 a.m., Linda Pillo, Police Chief for the Bellevue Police Department: “An FBI analysis found that 41 of the 211 law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty … were killed with weapons that can be defined as assault weapons.” (I didn’t catch the time frame of those 211 killings. Apologies.) She said assault rifles allow people to “spray a lethal volley” of bullets at a crowd of people. “Assault weapons can also be converted to fully automatic machine guns,” she said.
10:49 – Hearing is over, and the crowd is filing out.
Sen. Adam Kline is opening up the hearing on a bill to ban assault rifles. He said so many people are signed up, not everyone will have a chance to speak. But, he said, the pro and con sides will have equal time.
“At the federal level, we’ve banned machine guns. This is a reasonable extension of that ban… the bill is patterned after the federal assault ban,” Kline said. He said it “simply bans a subset of semi-automatics.” The aim: “Those semi-automatics that have such characteristics … that make it more lethal than your ordinary deer rifle,” he said — to jeers from some in the crowd.
Kline told the crowd that the mother of a 17-year-old who was killed by an assault rifle would be testifying today, and asked that the crowd show some respect.
Austin Jenkins interviewed Congressman Jay Inslee for Thursday’s edition of Inside Olympia. Here’s what Inslee had to say:
- On the Interstate Compact: “I’ve been working with some other folks to see if there’s a way in Congress to make the Interstate Compact more efficient.” He said the effort “to repair the holes in that net” is bipartisan, and they’ll introduce a bill soon.
- On the Supreme Court ruling last week on corporations and campaign financing: “They have opened the floodgates to allow a corporation to come in and run ads, but the public never really knows where it comes from … the citizen will not see an ad that says, ‘We’re against Congressman Inslee because he’s against clean energy,’” he said — instead, he said the corporation or union will pick a nice-sounding name and run a smear ad. Inslee said another effort to reform campaign finance laws is in the works — and he hopes it will be bipartisan. “This is not the end of the universe as we know it.”
- On the Massachusetts election, and what it all means: The Democratic candidate was “terrible.”
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