With just days until the halfway point of the 60-day legislative session, 20th Legislative District lawmakers gathered remotely on Tuesday, Feb. 1 for a town hall to answer constituents’ questions on police reform, gun control, tax relief and the controversial delay of the state’s long-term care tax, among other topics.
The hour-long town hall was held over Zoom. Reps. Peter Abbarno, R-Centralia, and Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, as well as Senate Minority Leader Sen. John Braun were all in attendance.
The 20th Legislative District covers the extreme north-central end of Clark County and all of Woodland, Ariel and Cougar in Cowlitz County.
The first round of bill cutoffs occurred on Thursday, Feb. 3, when bills must be passed out of committee and read on the floors of either the House or Senate. Feb. 15 is the final day for legislation to pass in its house of origin.
Long term care delay
Among the most-discussed topics with lawmakers in the 20th Legislative District is the recent decision by Democratic legislators to delay by 18 months implementation of the WA Cares Long-Term Care Tax and program. For Gov. Jay Inslee, it was the first bill he signed into law stemming from the 2022 session.
Employees who saw deductions already are expected to receive refunds from the state, Seattle’s local NPR station, KUOW, reported.
Republicans have been in stark opposition to the program and the Democrats’ effort to swiftly delay its implementation following a number of inadequacies in the bill. Both Abbarno and Braun came out with news releases recently rebuking Inslee’s comments that the delay would serve as a fix.
Abbarno on Tuesday, Feb. 1 called it an “insolvent program” and continued calls for its repeal and replacement. He said Democrats and Republicans should come together to solve this issue and utilize private options.
“Ultimately, this is just not the plan and the hope is that over the next year we could actually work on a real solution for long-term care expenditures,” Abbarno said.
Braun agreed, noting WA Cares “is not a salvageable program.”
The program was originally set to go into effect at the beginning of January, taxing Washington state workers 58 cents on every $100 of earnings and allowing eligible state recipients access to $36,500 in long term care funding over their lifetime.
“This is one of those plans that might have been a good idea at one time, but doesn’t work mathematically. We need to repeal it, rebuild our private sector market and find ways to make this available to everybody around the state at an affordable price that provides real long-term care benefits,” Braun said.
Orcutt voiced optimism with the 18-month pause, noting that time overlaps with the 2023 legislative session and that they could possibly work out a better alternative by then.
Affordability and tax cuts
Orcutt, who serves as the ranking minority member on the House Finance Committee, said he’s trying to work on getting property tax relief for Washington state homeowners.
The Kalama Republican has introduced legislation this session, House Bill 1898, that would place limits on property taxes levied from school levies based on an amount that “approximates the fiscal impact of extraordinary growth in property values that exceeded the valuation growth assumptions of budget writers.” It hadn’t as of last week yet received a hearing in the Finance Committee.
Orcutt has also reintroduced HB 1247, which would allow an additional property tax exemption for seniors, veterans and persons with disabilities leasing land in mobile home parks. It, too, hasn’t seen much attention from Democrats.
One constituent, Jeff, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 2012, said he gets about $796 on Social Security insurance disability. Without his girlfriend, he said, he would likely be homeless due to the unaffordable nature of the state.
He asked what lawmakers would do to bring back more affordability.
“We need to cut taxes. We need to give money back. We have an $11 billion surplus. We need to give money back to people. What we need to do is we need to create housing inventory so we can drive down some of the costs of housing. We need to create more jobs, we need to tear down barriers,” Abbarno responded.
Another constituent asked about the $30 car tabs initiative, which was passed back in 2019 by Washington voters and later ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. Orcutt said he didn’t see “a whole lot of hope” in that continued effort.
Gun control legislation
Braun said he feels Senate Republicans have done a decent job to “bottle up” any firearm legislation.
“I don’t want to say confidently we’ll hold all of them, but I think we’ll do a pretty good job there,” he said.
HB 1630, introduced this session, would prohibit the open carry of firearms and other weapons in a local government building where public meetings are held, and also prohibits them at school board meetings. This bill is currently being debated in committee.
Senate Bill 5217 would prohibit the ownership or manufacturing of certain “assault weapons,” though Republicans have noted the bill is too vague and likely won’t make any progress this year as was the case the year prior.
Reforming police reform
Braun characterized this session as a “fix it year” for the Democratic majority on police reform.
Cascade Community Healthcare CEO Richard Stride asked lawmakers if there were any prominent fixes to House Bill 1310, which placed restrictions last year on certain use-of-force tactics and further placed his mobile crisis team in danger when responding to behavioral health calls.
Abbarno said Rep. Gina Mosbrucker, the ranking minority member on the House Public Safety Committee, was working on a fix through a comprehensive public safety bill, HB 1737, but that hasn’t yet had a hearing in Public Safety.
Democrats last week did pass House Bill 1735, which allows officers to use force under certain circumstances. That bill will now be considered by the Senate.
“The problem with what happened in the last session is the majority went too far. The majority wanted to defund the police, they wanted to ultimately disarm the police, and this session is turning into kind of a ‘Bob the Builder’ — let’s see if we can fix what we broke — type session,” Abbarno said.
Still, Democrats continue to introduce legislation that has a “chilling effect” on law enforcement, Abbarno said, citing the reintroduction of HB 1202, which would provide a cause of action for persons injured by officers and would grant the Attorney General’s Office the authority to file civil action against departments and officers.
Inslee’s buffer bill
One piece of legislation that has landowners, agricultural businesses and farmers up in arms is HB 1838, a bill requested by Gov. Jay Inslee that would require property owners on public and private land restore habitat along water, known as a riparian management zone, and maintain that land to the benefit of fish habitat.
The bill was criticized for not engaging property owners and agricultural sectors prior to its introduction.
Michelle Schilter, who owns a farm in the 20th Legislative District, told lawmakers the bill would “put my farm out of business.”
Orcutt, who sits on the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said the bill wasn’t up for an executive session vote prior to cutoff, meaning it’s likely dead in the water this session.
“You are absolutely right. This takes way too much land away from our farmers. Some of the buffers — 250 feet. They take out flood plains. That’s where a lot of our prime farmland is,” Orcutt said.
“I’m really concerned (by) the way this came forward at the request of the governor, without stakeholder input, stakeholder work on it,” he continued, adding that the bill wasn’t “necessary” and that it was “ill conceived.”
“One of the other things that I try to get across to people, too, is if we take 35% of a farmer’s land, we don’t necessarily take 35% of their profits. We may end up taking 100% of their profits because it may make that farm inoperable and that’s just not acceptable,” he said. “We are the bread basket for the world.”
