A last-ditch attempt is under way to cement a state promise for a University of Washington campus in Snohomish County.

This legislative maneuver does not settle where the proposed four-year college should be built, buying time for all the involved personalities to cool off, then resolve whether Everett or Marysville or another location becomes the final destination.

Nor does this effort set a timetable for construction of buildings and start of classes, giving presidents of existing colleges less reason to fear their cash boxes will be raided to fund a new institution.

What it attempts to do is get the Legislature to place a UW flag atop a pole with orders to plant it in Snohomish County if ever a site is chosen and money provided.

This would accomplish far less than the area’s legislators wanted when they arrived in January. Yet at this juncture — the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn Thursday — getting a pledge in law is far more than they had in hand last week.

Things had gone pretty sour. Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, couldn’t get a vote on his bill to base the university at Everett’s transit center.

Even if he had, Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, repeatedly promised to kill the legislation if it reached the Senate. She’s dead set against that location.

Dunshee, Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, and the city of Everett’s band of lobbyists stitched together this newest effort. Haugen on Friday said she’s “comfortable with this.”

Essentially legislation she conceived of dealing with criteria for choosing a site will be gutted and its entire content replaced with the language of Dunshee’s stalled bill — minus its inflammatory reference to Everett.

“We’re shopping it around,” Dunshee said Friday of the draft text. “If we can’t get agreement, we won’t do it.”

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Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, thought she had agreement on the one bill she authored this session.

House Bill 3161 said convicted sex offenders ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device should reimburse the state for costs of the equipment if they are financially able.

Though most aren’t, the state Department of Corrections would figure out who can.

The House of Representatives passed it 97-0. Thursday morning, HB 3161 appeared on a roster of bills set for votes by the Senate. Lawmakers never got to it.

Then the bill disappeared from all future lists, dying Friday when the Senate failed to act on it by a 5 p.m. deadline.

“It was such a common-sense bill it is difficult to understand why anyone would not support it,” Smith said.

Majority Democrats apparently didn’t mind the make-them-pay concept. They didn’t quite think it necessary because so few offenders actually would fork out cash.

Smith is disappointed but not done with this idea.

“I’ll try again next year.”

Read political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, at www.heraldnet.com. Contact him at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.