It’s in the quiet years that things get done.
At least that’s how it used to be, when state legislators could get potentially controversial reforms passed without the intense public scrutiny of major budget writing sessions, according to state Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park.
Gov. Gary Locke used to say, ” ‘the short session is the best time to run through big huge items because nobody’s noticing,’ ” Fairley said.
The 2004 legislative session, which begins Monday, Jan. 12, is such a year, with the main budget for 2003-05 having been written last year. Some supplemental budgeting will be done, possibly in the area of education, legislators say, but they will be concentrating more on issues than on ways to pay for things.
Tort reform tops many legislators’ lists of the largest battle looming in Olympia this year.
Fairley said no fewer than five bills are expected to be introduced limiting damages for “pain and suffering” to the $250,000 to $350,000 range. Currently, they are unlimited, which many blame for causing malpractice insurance premiums for doctors to skyrocket, in turn influencing health care costs.
Fairley, an accident victim herself, opposes such limits, contending that in other states where they’ve been put in place, insurance premiums still increased. But there will be big pressure on legislators from doctors and their representative organizations to support the limits, she said.
Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Lake Forest Park, agrees that the problem can’t be pinned on pain-and-suffering damages alone. She said she’s helping work on a package with Locke, legislative Democrats and Attorney General Christine Gregoire that includes insurance reform.
“The single focus on (damage) caps is not going to solve the problem,” Kagi said. “If we put caps in tomorrow it’s not going to lower premiums.”
Another project of Kagi’s will be to possibly tweak, if necessary, a bill she helped pass in which people convicted of using illegal drugs are given the option of going to treatment instead of prison. It was hoped the “drug courts” would result in fewer people going to prison on drug offenses, but the rate is still going up, Kagi said.
She suspects it’s because of a 50 percent “good time” law recently instituted in which many non-violent offenders are being let out halfway through their sentences for good behavior. It could be taking away some of the incentive to go through drug court and treatment, Kagi said.
“If you go to drug court you’ve got to clean your act up,” she said.
What to do with state prisoners who get out under the “good time” law and violate their supervision regulations is becoming a bigger problem, said Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, chair of the House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee. Some of the state prisoners who committed violations were being taken to county jails, but now counties are refusing to admit them, O’Brien said. A possibility would be for the state to pay the counties to house the prisoners, but it would involve expense, he said.
O’Brien said he also is looking for ways to provide housing and, ultimately, other help for mentally ill prisoners who are released into society with no support system and wind up reoffending. One possibility for homeless veterans deemed mentally ill is federal funding, but that would cover only that group, he said.
State Rep. Maralyn Chase, D-Edmonds, said one issue she will be working on this session in Trade and Economic Development committee is making it easier for small community businesses to do business in this state.
“We’ve done quite a lot for mega-corporations, and Boeing is one example as is bio-tech, but our community businesses, those who are not going to pick up and leave for India or outsource, we want to find ways to help them prosper,” she said.
She also plans to introduce a solar energy bill this session, “to see if we can help home owners use more solar energy,” she said. She is working with community members on an economic stimulus project to make the solar circuit wafers necessary for the panels. “The ideal would be to get enough energy panels on our roofs to get us off the grid,” she said.
Chase also has some ideas for developing the Fircrest School site in Shoreline, and keeping the school for developmentally disabled adults open. She fought last session against its downsizing and closure and says she will continue the fight.
“Fircrest is the infrastructure of the entire developmental disabilities system. Fircrest sets the standard of care. They have a magnet that has attracted innovative people, and we must maintain it,” she said.
In addition to keeping the institution open, she proposes an ethnic cultural arts center on the site.
“We’ve got a great proposal from several different ethnic groups: Greek Americans, Hispanic Americans, Filipino Americans, Asian Americans to have a cultural center there. They can teach cuisine, ceramics, pottery, in one cultural center that they share monetarily,” Chase said.
She also wants to look at building low income housing for seniors and the disabled on the site as well, and she wants to look at creating a one-stop social services location for the north end there.
“United Way did a study of north King county, and found of the 100 human service providers we have here, only 12 here have a physical location. A few are up at Center for Human Services (in Shoreline), some are at the Shoreline/Lake Forest Park Senior Center and some at the Bothell Northshore Senior Center. We’ve got a food bank, over at Fircrest, that has to truck food over to a Methodist church parking lot to deliver food. Redmond had family service center that’s a one stop location for many services. We’ve got room at Fircrest, we could site all of the necessary social services there. The speaker is very interested in this proposal. It has a lot of possibilities.”
On the environmental front, Rep. Mike Cooper, D-Edmonds, said that in the wake of the Dec. 30 Point Wells fuel spill, a bill will be introduced to require containment booms to be placed around barges before and during fueling of 5,000 gallons or more. A hearing is scheduled for next week on the bill in the House Fisheries, Ecology and Parks Committee, of which Cooper is chair. The Point Wells spill was caused by the tank having been overfilled, and the oil subsequently contaminated clam beds on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Other issues mentioned by legislators as likely to come up are the state primary system; opening dependency court proceedings for adolescents to the public; banning lead in buckshot; the “mole-and-gopher fix” to the trapping ban, and educational issues such as charter schools and finding money for teacher cost-of-living increases.
Shoreline Editor Pamela Brice contributed to this report.
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