Week one of this year’s 60-day legislative session is in the books

January 18, 2020

Thank you for subscribing to my legislative email updates. Topics in this update include:

  • House Republican priorities for this session
  • Survey question: Should the Legislature legalize sports betting in Washington state?
  • Weekly interview on iFIBEROne News Radio
  • Continuing to keep a record of my legislative meetings
  • Contacting me

As another session gets under way, I want to encourage you to get involved in the legislative process. I know that can be a daunting task if you don’t know where to start, which is why I’ve provided you with a number of links I hope will be helpful as this year’s 60-day session progresses.

  • Follow House Republicans on Twitter and Facebook, and please share our posts.
  • Bookmark and visit The Ledger every day. The Ledger is our new legislative news aggregator that features the biggest stories from around the state, as well as all House Republican communications.
  • Watch TVW’s “Legislative Review,” which airs nightly and gives viewers a 15-minute overview of what happened that day at the Capitol.
  • Visit the Washington State Legislature’s website to view a list of bills by topic and learn how to testify on a bill in committee.

Please also feel free to email me any time with comments, questions or concerns.

House Republican priorities for this session

During the long interim, the 40 of us in the House Republican Caucus got together on several occasions to discuss what we wanted our agenda to look like this year. After much deliberation, we decided our focus should be on safety, affordability and accountability, with our slogan being: “It’s Your Home. Expect More.”

Our argument is simple: You should expect more from those who control the agenda and the purse strings here in Olympia. Under one-party control, many parts of our state have become less safe and less affordable, and there’s been a complete lack of accountability for the long list of failures we’ve seen in recent years.

As House Republicans, we’re focused on developing solutions to provide a better way forward for Washington state. We want people to feel safe in their communities. We want to eliminate unnecessary financial burdens that make it harder to get ahead. And finally, we want all Washingtonians to feel confident their government is working for them.

Please visit the priorities page on our caucus website to learn more about our agenda and the solutions we’re proposing.

One issue that that falls under both the ‘affordable’ and ‘accountable’ parts of our agenda is $30 car tabs, which were approved by 53 percent of voters in November. While some politicians and activists are working overtime to ensure you never see a reduction in your car tab fees, House Republicans are doing the opposite. Earlier this week, we rolled out a comprehensive transportation package to implement $30 car tabs, establish a new transportation funding source without raising taxes, and cut WSDOT bureaucracy instead of projects.

One of my bills, House Bill 2323, is part of the package. It would phase in a shift of the state sales tax on motor vehicles (in increments of 10 percent for the next 10 years) to pay for cash-based preservation and maintenance projects. If we were to implement this reform over time, our operating budget could absorb the change and we would address the preservation and maintenance needs of our transportation system for years to come. This approach would generate an estimated $117.5 million in revenue for transportation in 2021 alone.

To learn more about our transportation solutions, click here. I also had the opportunity to touch on them earlier this week during our House and Senate Republican press conference. Watch:

Survey question: Should the Legislature legalize sports betting in Washington state?

A couple of bills have been introduced this session that would legalize sports betting in Washington state, and I want your thoughts. First, I want to know whether you support or oppose legalizing sports betting. Second, for those of you who DO support legalization, I want to know which of the two approaches you prefer.

Please click here to take my survey, and thank you in advance for your responses!

Weekly interview on iFIBEROne News Radio

Every Wednesday at 7:40 a.m., I will be live on iFIBEROne News Radio to talk with Jeff Slakey and give a brief legislative update to listeners. I want to thank Jeff for the opportunity to be on his program every week. To listen to these interviews, I invite you tune in live or visit my SoundCloud page.

Continuing to keep a record of my legislative meetings

In the interest of full transparency, I will be providing PDFs of my weekly meetings during the 2020 session, just as I did last session. Click here for a list of meetings I held or attended during the first week of session.

Contacting me

The most important part of my job is listening to you. Please contact me any time to share your comments, questions and concerns about the legislative session or anything else that’s on your mind.

It is an honor to serve you.