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Little-noticed bills make a big difference for many

By Marilyn Watkins

Every year a handful of hot topics before the Legislature get lots of press, like the Sonics and domestic partnerships. This year, bills to limit toxic chemicals in toys, curb greenhouse gases, and set up a system to provide tax rebates to low-income state residents also rightly received some media attention.

The 2008 Washington Legislature passed 341 bills -- out of more than 4,000 up for consideration. Even those of us who spend a lot of time in Olympia can't keep track of them all, and most people never hear about the majority of new laws.

Here are a few good bills that quietly made it through the legislative obstacle course this year.

House Bill 2427 establishes a permanent cosmetology apprenticeship program. It will allow people to "earn while they learn" to be barbers, manicurists and cosmetologists in a supervised setting. Apprenticeship programs offer a proven pathway into decent paying professions for young adults without the financial resources for long periods of formal education, and for those who learn best by doing.

Cosmetology is a steadily growing occupation. It won't make anyone rich, but it supplies a living wage, averaging $15.45 per hour in the Everett area.

The passage of House Bill 3123 should be appreciated by everyone who might ever find themselves or a loved one needing hospital care. Studies have shown that long work hours by nurses, along with reductions in staffing and training, are putting hospital patients at risk. In response, nurses' unions and hospital managers came together to agree on this bill's provisions. It's a common-sense approach that requires hospitals to implement nurse staffing plans, with nurses themselves having a central role in developing and evaluating the plans. This bill will improve patient health, and in the long run, slow the rising cost of health care.

House Bill 2602 allows victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking to take a reasonable amount of unpaid time off work for medical treatment and counseling, pursuing legal remedies, and seeking safety and shelter. This is another common-sense piece of legislation that will help victims and their family members retain jobs, while helping keep the workplace safer for everyone.

The Local Farms-Healthy Kids act, Senate Bill 6483, is a nice win all around. It removes barriers that have forced schools, other public institutions and low-income moms receiving food assistance to buy food from big national suppliers rather than local farmers. It replaces those barriers with logistical assistance to purchase locally grown food.

Here's a bill that reduces childhood obesity, provides tastier and more nutritious food to school lunch rooms, reduces global warming, and helps Washington's family farmers all at once. It's hard to beat that for good public policy. The bill benefitted from a large group of sponsors, representing both parties, and urban and rural districts from across the state.

Given all that state government is responsible for, legislators consider literally thousands of bills on hundreds of topics every year. There are public schools and higher education, highways and ferries, prisons and the justice system, environmental stewardship and state parks. There's everyone who needs to be licensed to assure public health and safety, including drivers, medical professionals, daycare providers, and heavy equipment operators.

Then there are foster kids, the mentally ill, low income seniors, and other vulnerable populations to be protected and served. There's unemployment insurance, worker's compensation, and job retraining for displaced workers. And there's the whole system of taxation and administration that keeps those services going.

A growing, changing economy means that laws governing all these systems have to change, too, sometimes with tweaks, and sometimes with major overhauls.

We take so much of state government's work for granted that it is invisible unless something goes wrong. But the foundation of services and oversight the state provides allows us to go about our daily lives confident in the basic safety and reliability of the products, structures, and services we encounter. The Legislature is responsible for making sure it stays that way.

Interested in learning more about the bills debated this year? Check out the Legislature's Web site at www.leg.wa.gov.



Marilyn Watkins, policy director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, writes every other Wednesday. Her e-mail address is marilyn@eoionline.org.