Following the release of a positive economic forecast, Senate and House fiscal committees will roll out their supplemental operating and capital budgets. By late Tuesday, AWC will assess the budgets’ impacts on cities and towns and then share our summary with our members, legislators, and others. After brief hearings, legislators will likely move budget bills forward for discussion and debate.

At the same time, policy committees will scramble to hear and consider bills deemed still alive – those that have survived cutoff and passed from one chamber to the opposite one. The deadline to keep these bills moving is Friday, February 23. If policy bills have a state fiscal impact, they have to clear a fiscal committee by Monday, February 26 to remain under consideration, unless somehow deemed to be “necessary to implement the budget,” which means they have a chance to be considered up until adjournment scheduled for Thursday, March 8.

What does this mean for AWC Priorities?

Within this edition of our Legislative Bulletin, we highlight and summarize numerous key bills and issues still moving – several of them we support and others we oppose or have concerns with. On the positive side, several bills remain aimed at providing tools and resources to help communities address housing and human service provision needs, along with some that help cities address economic development, infrastructure, and criminal justice challenges.

We continue to ask legislators to consider improvements to their voting rights legislation aimed at providing broader opportunities for protected classes of voters to participate and gain representation in locally elected bodies like city councils. SB 6002 continues to move forward, but not in a form that addresses some of our basic concerns. We’ll continue to make our case for improvements to a bill we know will eventually pass, and we encourage interested cities to keep communicating with your own legislators.

As we anticipated with the recent change in which party controls the Senate, there are a number of bills moving in the personnel and legal liability areas that may be good policy, but will place added costs on local governments. We continue to explore ideas on how to reduce or limit fiscal exposure from them, while at the same time reminding proponents that absent new resources, paying for these ideas will likely result in diminished funding for other local programs that they also care about.

Almost 60 mayors coming to town – add your voices to theirs!

On Wednesday, mayors from cities large and small throughout the state will gather in Olympia to share their best ideas on how to serve their communities and many will remind legislators how to partner for the same results. Governor Jay Inslee will speak to them as well.

This third to the last week of the 2018 session is a great opportunity to call your legislators on the phone, remind them what you need, and tell them how they can provide you the tools and resources needed to do your jobs.