Rep. Kessler announces retirement

As the 2010 special session was winding down in the early morning hours of April 13th, the good lady from the 24th District rose for a point of personal privilege. People gathered in the House wings to listen, having been informed that there would be a “special announcement” on the floor.

Still, her announcement took many by surprise. After 18 years in the House, including 12 as Majority Leader, Rep. Lynn Kessler is retiring. Many were shocked to find out that our House Majority Leader is approaching 70 years of age, which she admitted to in her farewell speech. Most of us would have never guessed it.

You could hear the emotion in her voice as she reflected on her Legislative career and recalled special memories from those 18 years. On both sides of the aisle, eyes welled up with tears. And as both Democrats and Republicans rose to speak in honor of her, it was clear that Rep. Kessler has always been viewed as a true stateswoman.

All of us in the House Democratic Caucus are going to miss the example of class and dignity that she set. Her final floor speech will be available soon on her website.

Thank you, Rep. Kessler, for 18 distinguished years of service for the people of Washington.

At long last - Sine Die 2010

The first bill passed by the House this session was also one of the last. The JOBS Act of 2010, which will go to the voters in November, will create at least 30,000 jobs for the hard-hit construction industry while making schools safer and more energy-efficient. The Senate also approved the measure this evening.

“While the economy and the resulting budget situation dominate the headlines, we also focused on the longer-term needs of our state,” said House Speaker Frank Chopp. “We spent last summer and fall building an agenda to address issues families talk about around their kitchen tables – decent-paying jobs, good schools, safe communities. We made real progress on all those fronts while continuing to find ways to trim the budget and reform the way government works.”

“We tried to meet the real needs of real people,” said Majority Leader Lynn Kessler. “Naturally, we concentrated on the budget, but we also wanted to make sure our businesses – and our people – are well-positioned to take advantage of the new jobs that will be available as we come out of this Great Recession.”

Key bills approved during the 2010 session include:

Balancing the budget

• Reduced agency spending.
• Suspended performance bonuses and salary increases for many state employees.
• Extended the ban on hiring, travel, contracting, and purchases.

Putting Washington back to work

• JOBS Act of 2010 will, if approved by voters, create at least 38,000 jobs around the state while making our public schools safer, healthier, and more energy efficient.
• Washington Works Housing Act will put an additional 10,000 construction workers back to work building affordable housing so people like nurses, police officers, and teachers can live closer to their jobs.
• Continued to provide incentives for industries to locate and grow in Washington, from an extension of the rural tax credit for creating jobs in areas hardest hit by unemployment to a new exemption for high-tech companies who build the next generation of data centers in our state.
  

Educating our kids

• We took next step in reforming K-12 funding by setting in motion the first recommendations from the Quality Education Council, the group tasked with implementing HB 2261.
• Restored, protected, and enhanced local levy funding by allowing school districts to calculate their levies to funding levels that existed prior to 2009 when the legislature was forced to cut education budgets.
• Approved new strategies for turning around low-performing schools and a new evaluation system for teachers and principals designed to position Washington schools to succeed in the federal Race to the Top.
• Provided help for thousands of low-income students to pay for college with some of the most generous financial aid programs in the nation, making Washington a leader in student access and affordability.
• Gave assistance to community and technical colleges to help thousands of unemployed workers seeking to retrain and retool for jobs in emerging industries.
  

Community safety

• Gave voters the opportunity to amend the state constitution so that judges may consider withholding bail on anyone charged with a crime punishable by the possibility of life in prison, thereby restricting release on the toughest, most dangerous criminals.
• Required that a bail may only be granted by a judge for a person arrested and detained for a felony offense, and does away with the “booking bail” schedule.
• Exempted the photographs and birth date information in personnel files of criminal justice employees from disclosure under the Public Records Act, except for media requests. This protects law enforcement officers and their families from threats by inmates.
  

Reforming government

• Transformed the way we fund our public schools, simplifying the current complicated budgeting process and increasing transparency.
• Reformed the way safety net services are delivered with the Disability Lifeline, which stresses quicker transitions to self-sufficiency and better utilizations of state and federal dollars.
• Redesigned the delivery of temporary assistance to needy families with services that will help recipients getting back on their feet more quickly.
• Eliminated, consolidated and/or streamlined numerous boards, commissions, and agency functions.
• Improved Washington State Ferries operations by eliminating inefficiencies and changing the way labor contracts are negotiated.
  

Running a Lean Legislature

This month's issue of State Legislatures magazine, produced by the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures, features Going Lean, a report on how a few legislatures around the country have trimmed their own budgets to save tax dollars:

In Washington, lawmakers finally have figured out a way to cut down on their paperwork. They simply can’t afford to print as many documents. The state House printing budget has been cut by $568,000.

Committee staff no longer produce glossy binders filled with documents for members to leaf through on the dais. Instead, lawmakers read legislation, bill analyses and other necessary materials on their laptops. “We’ve also made that same electronic information available to the public, though the public website,” says Bernard Dean, deputy clerk of the House.

Legislators also more often communicate electronically with their constituents, given a 38 percent cut to their printing and postal budgets. “The cost of mailing a newsletter far exceeds the cost of e-mailing a newsletter,” Dean says.

The story goes on to quote our Majority Leader Lynn Kessler:

In the Washington House, the number of aides hired for the session has decreased, and about 10 year-round staff positions have been eliminated. The staff who remain are taking furlough days. Legislative staff overall accounted for 62 percent of the unpaid days taken by Washington state employees during the first six months of the current fiscal year—an astonishing statistic when you consider that House and Senate personnel together make up just 440 of the state’s 71,000 full-time employees.

That discrepancy won’t last. Lynn Kessler, the Washington House majority leader, notes that other state employees now find themselves facing furlough days, which were imposed this year. Kessler also argues that the Legislature needed to grow more efficient and get out of the business of doing things that private companies should be taking care of.

Kessler says the Legislature, despite the cuts, “is left in a place we’re comfortable with. We’ve just cut back like everybody else,” she says. “We are not more important than the private sector people who have been laid off.”

Forestry-jobs measure all set for gubernatorial love

Yes, there’s still plenty of heavy lifting to do in the 2010 Legislature. There’s cumbersome iron to pump in these parts, for sure. The worldwide financial, uh, poop took years to really hit the fan, after all.

But at least one big economic-development task is about to be wiped clean from the must-do chalkboard. A key timber bill prime-sponsored by Rep. Dean Takko navigated the state-capital obstacle course sans a single opposing vote. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate unanimously passed Takko’s House Bill 2541 in this year’s regular session – and the governor is poised to sign it. Takko pointed out that his prime-sponsored legislation directs the state Department of Natural Resources to write landowner-conservation plans that support forest landowners. These proposals must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2011.

The bill will provide the kind of conservation incentives needed for defending timber jobs, public resources, and private, working forestland. Takko said the prime directive of the legislation is to fashion a collaborative approach that balances job-protection with protection for the environment.

“Our state has lost 16 pulp mills just in the past five years,” said the Longview Democrat, who represents southwestern Washington’s 19th Legislative District. “We’ve seen thousands of workers thrown out of a job. We need to help private foresters maintain land and continue to move wood products. This bill looks both to keep the timber industry economically viable and to explore opportunities for protecting the environment.”

Rep. Lynn Kessler, who joined Takko in co-sponsoring the bill, observed that many rural communities rely upon a healthy forest-products industry. Timber dollars support small businesses; they support local schools,” Kessler said. “When the industry is stable, these communities thrive.”

Mark Doumit, Executive Director of the Washington Forest Protection Association, said that “we greatly appreciate Representative Takko’s leadership on this legislation. He and other legislators recognize that in order for working forests to continue to protect our environment and provide tens of thousands of jobs in our state, we need to focus on ways to make owning forestland economically viable. The alternative is conversion and permanent loss of those lands.”

The forest-products industry is Washington's second largest manufacturing sector, providing nearly 45,000 direct jobs and almost 100,000 indirect jobs. The Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers also supported the bill in committee testimony.

Takko’s bill recognizes the importance of emerging ecosystem services markets and places emphasis on accessing capital to finance ecosystem services. The legislation also requires the Department of Natural Resources to develop a report on conservation incentives to protect, restore and maintain the ecological values that the public enjoys. We’re talking specifically about recreation, clean water, renewable energy, carbon storage and habitat for fish and wildlife.

Nothing to see here

You already know the Legislature is in a bit of a holding pattern right now. Your HDC bloggers would love to provide some juicy insight into what's happening, but really, we're awaiting news of a final revenue package agreement just like you are.

Our majority whip, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, sends a daily note to legislators and staff with the latest news which, as of yesterday's update, has been merely that negotiations continue and only pro forma session is planned (meaning no floor action and no need for members to be here).

So, in the absence of anything newsworthy to report, here's a short roundup of what local pundits, news folks and our House Majority Leader have to say about ongoing budget negotiations.

Everett Herald: Gregoire threatens broad cuts if Legislature can't agree
Olympia Newswire: Blame the Sales Tax
Publicola: Senate requesting special conference
House Majority Lynn Kessler on TVW: "We don't have enough votes for a sales tax"

Another round of bills safely out of the House

House Democrats continued their work to improve public safety and the criminal justice system on Saturday night by passing another package of reforms to protect lives and rights—including:

• A measure by Rep. Jeannie Darneille that aims to ban the shackling of women inmates as they give birth.

• House Bill 3124 by Rep. Mary Helen Roberts to prevent children from injury and death by requiring law enforcement officers to notify child protective services when a child is in the car of a driver who is arrested for a drug- or alcohol-related driving offense. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that 68 percent of all child deaths from vehicle collisions between 1997 to 2002 involved drunken driving when children were in the car.

• House Bill 2739 by Rep. Geoff Simpson increases safety in school safety zones by doubling penalties for several traffic violations related to school crosswalks and speed zones. Half the funds collected would go to the School Zone Safety Account.

• House Bill 1317 by Rep. Lynn Kessler protects police officers and other criminal justice employees by exempting their photographs and birth dates from public disclosure requests.

• House Bill 2492, also by Rep. Simpson, would allow members of the Law Enforcement Officers' and Fire Fighters' Retirement System (LEOFF) Plan II to include shared leave when calculating retirement benefits. This reform would give nearly 16,000 local law enforcement officers and firefighters a shared leave right that is similar to what state employees currently enjoy.

Van De Wege receives “Sound Hero” award

On September 29, Rep. Kevin Van De Wege (Sequim) was presented with a “Sound Hero” award by People for Puget Sound for his efforts to keep Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan De Fuca safe from oil spills. Last session, Rep. Van De Wege was the prime sponsor of the House version of a bill to require that a rescue tug, funded by industry, be stationed year-round at Neah Bay, Wash. Working together with state Senator Kevin Ranker (D – San Juan), Rep. Van De Wege pushed to ensure the bill’s passage. It was signed into law by Governor Gregoire on the 20th anniversary of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.

Both Rep. Van De Wege and his seatmate, House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler (Hoquiam), have been very aware of the need for a permanently-funded rescue tug because it was in their legislative district that one of Washington’s worst oil spills took place. The 1991 Tenyo Maru spill fouled beaches from British Columbia to Oregon, but the worst oiling was along the Olympic National Park shoreline and the Makah Indian Reservation, both of which are in the 24th Legislative District. The spill occurred when a Japanese fishing vessel collided with a freighter in calm summer waters off the coast of Cape Flattery.

“There are so many people who have worked so hard to ensure that we’d have a fully-funded rescue tug,” Rep. Van De Wege said. “I’m very honored to receive this award, but our success this year would not have been possible without the joint efforts of legislators, tribal leaders, local government officials, and citizen groups.”

The award was presented at the Dungeness River Audubon Center in Sequim.

New requirement will help preserve paper mill jobs

Among the many bills going into effect on July 26 is one that will require all state agencies with 25 or more employees to switch to 100 percent recycled office paper by the end of this year. That means printers and photocopiers will be stocked with recycled paper only. Additionally, agencies will have to develop and implement a plan to reduce overall paper usage by at least 30 percent within a year.

The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Lynn Kessler, who represents Washington’s 24th Legislative District. The district is home to pulp and paper mills that provide good family-wage jobs, including one mill that produces 100 percent recycled paper using a certified “green” manufacturing process.

Not only will this new requirement give a boost to recycled paper manufacturers, it also enables the state to “walk the walk” when it comes to conserving resources and reducing waste. The state Department of Ecology and the City of Seattle already use 100 percent recycled paper, and not only are they experiencing some cost savings, they are also discovering that recycled paper is no more likely to jam a printer or copier than regular paper.

Of course, Murphy’s Law still dictates that no matter what kind of paper you use, the photocopier will jam when you are in a hurry.

Rep. Kessler champions protections for sexually harassed tenants

Rep. Lynn Kessler paid her first visit of the session to the House Judiciary Committee today to testify on her bill, HB 1856. The measure would increase safety for victims of sexual assault and harassment by their landlords by allowing them to change the locks on their dwelling unit or break a lease without penalty.

“This kind of legislation does saves lives,” said Rep. Kessler. “If you were the victim of sexual assault or harassment by your landlord, and that landlord had a key to your place and could enter at any time - how could you ever sleep? How could you live any kind of a normal life within those walls? I just don’t think you could.”

The Northwest Women’s Law Center supports the bill because, according to staff attorney David Ward, there is currently a “gap in the law” when it comes to sexual assault victims who are in landlord/tenant relationships with the perpetrators. Although current law allows these victims to break their leases, they lose any rent they already paid for the month they move out, and have no protection against financial penalties for breaking the lease. There is also the special problem of having no right to change the locks.

“The tenant is in a different situation because the perpetrator has a key to the residence,” Mr. Ward testified.

One woman who testified before the committee said her landlord had offered to waive late fees on her rent if she would agree to “go out” with him. When she rebuffed his advances, he demanded an immediate payment of $9000. He also would enter her apartment without giving the required 24 hours notice.

Landlord organizations raised some concerns about the bill in the hearing, but as prime sponsor Rep. Kessler is willing to work with them to move the bill out of the committee by next week’s cutoff.

“Nobody wants to hurt landlords,” Rep. Kessler said as she concluded her remarks. “We just want to protect people who are caught up in this situation.”

Lawmakers say thanks but no thanks to raises this year

As reported by Jennifer Sullivan at the Seattle Times, Rep. Lynn Kessler and Senator Ed Murray are asking the citizen committee that determines lawmaker salaries to skip the pay raises this year.

Sullivan reports:

Kessler argued that raising their $42,000-per-year salary seemed unfair when people across the state are losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet. The commission met at a downtown Olympia hotel to hear testimony from lawmakers on whether they should give officials in the executive, judicial and legislative branches of state government a raise.

"I sincerely believe we're all in this together," Kessler testified before the commission. "We're all tightening our belts."

The Washington Citizens' Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials will hold several additional public meetings before making its decision in June.

House Democrats elect additional leadership posts

Washington House Democrats have selected more members of their leadership team. Joining Speaker-designate Frank Chopp, Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, Caucus Chair Bill Grant, Majority Whip Sharon Tomiko Santos, and Speaker pro tem-designate Jeff Morris are:

Majority Floor Leader: Zack Hudgins

Majority Caucus Liaison: Larry Springer

Caucus Vice Chair: Dawn Morrell

Assistant Majority Floor Leader: Tami Green

Deputy Majority Whip: Kevin Van De Wege

In 2007-08, Hudgins and Springer shared Floor Leader duties while Morrell served as Deputy Majority Whip. Van De Wege was an Assistant Majority Whip.