(Images courtesy of TVW)
State legislative leaders say they have some core issues to face in their upcoming session and, in their annual session preview, both party leaders say they need to pass bills on areas where they agree to tackle those issues.
House Speaker, Democrat Laurie Jinkins, says they want to build on an economy that ranked top in the nation, but that Washingtonians say homelessness, mental health, community safety and abortion rights are top issues. “The other thing that I think is going to be an omnipresent issue over all of these, and will prevent us from solving any of them,” Jinkins says, “is if we don’t address workforce in a really big way.” Businesses of all kinds have struggled since the pandemic to find enough qualified or even willing workers to fill the jobs they have to offer. House Republican Leader, J.T. Wilcox, says he’s put a focus on the Latinx population by adding the experience of central Washington Republican Representative, Alex Ybarra, to the Education and Workforce Committee. Wilcox says the Latinx population is the only growing part of the workforce. Wilcox says, “Every single time I talk to someone involved in training, I ask them if they have an outreach program to reach Hispanic youth…and make sure that this part of our economy is able to access all of the training opportunities that are so necessary to our future.”
Both sides say that digging in their ideological heels prevents solutions, so they say they want to find the areas where there’s a lot of agreement to get things accomplished.
Governor Jay Inslee also laid out his top priorities for the legislative session with homelessness at the top.
The Governor says we should not accept thousands of people living in squalor on our streets, and he says newer approaches are working, like more permanent housing with services on site, but he says homelessness is not a “self-correcting problem”. “This is not something we can wish away. We have to act,” Inslee says, “if we’re going to actually reduce homelessness. Number two, we have to approach it at scale. Nibbling little small actions is not going to take the necessary bite out of homelessness that we need.”
Inslee has proposed $4 billion to build more housing, where he’s said repeatedly we fall far short. That housing not only includes the permanent but short-term, known as “rapid re-housing”, like old hotels and other buildings with mental health, addiction and other services on site, but he also wants to build more homes to make renting or buying more affordable for more people and to prevent those on the bubble from falling into homelessness. To do that, Inslee says he’ll also ask you to vote for taking on bond debt in order to do it more quickly rather than chipping away with smaller appropriations in the budget each year that don’t really lead to any progress.
The Governor also again addressed what he says are critical bills to protect the climate, and he says expanding law enforcement training, gun laws, like requiring safety training to buy a gun, and tackling homelessness are all things that can help to improve public safety. Inslee referred to taking “weapons of war” off the streets, which is a hint that he’ll go after assault-style weapons. Other leading Olympia Democrats have told Northwest Newsradio that is definitely on their agenda for this session. Gun lobbyists say calling them “assault weapons” is a misnomer because they say guns like an AR-15, other than their appearance, are really just rifles no different than a standard semi-automatic rifle with a barrel and wooden stock used by hunters and not like a high-powered like a military M-16.
You can watch the entire legislative preview on TVW here.