Governor releases budget that relies on higher taxes This week, Governor Jay Inslee finally unveiled his long-awaited budget proposal. Unfortunately, though he promised to avoid tax increases on the campaign trail, his budget relies on new taxes totaling $1.4 billion over the next two years, including tax increases on businesses, oil refineries, beer and bottled-water drinkers and out-of-state... Read More...

The status of my bills in the House of Representatives Since mid-March, the Senate has been holding hearings on House bills and the House has been considering Senate bills. Many of my bills have received public hearings in House committees, while some are still awaiting action. Read More...

Bridges to a Better Government E-Newsletter for March 8, 2013 We’ve spent the past week in the Senate discussing, debating and passing bills from our chamber and sending them to the House of Representatives. The House has been doing the same, and we’ll all continue doing it next week as well as we approach what’s known in the Legislature as... Read More...

Bridges to a Better Government E-Newsletter for March 2, 2013 Yesterday was the final day fiscal bills could be considered by the Senate Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Transportation Committee. From this point forward, only bills deemed “necessary to implement the budget” can continue to be heard in committees. We’ll be spending the next several weeks debating and... Read More...

Bridges to a Better Government E-Newsletter for February 24, 2013 Friday was what’s known as “committee cutoff” in the Washington State Legislature, and there were a lot of good bills that made it through to the next phase. Although policy committees are now finished, fiscal committees (like Senate Ways and Means and Senate Transportation) will continue to consider bills into... Read More...

Bridges to a Better Government E-Newsletter for February 15, 2013 Thank you for reading my e-newsletter! I’ll be sending out new editions weekly as the 2013 legislative session progresses. Please feel free to forward this to any of your friends who might want to recveive it as well. The more participation we can generate, the better representation you will have... Read More...