I know, I know. I cannot stop talking about this year’s legislative session! If you are a regular reader, you are (hopefully) used to it by now. If you do not embrace it, perhaps you tolerate it. That is good enough for me. If you are fairly new to Courts & Committees, please bear with me this one last time. Next week I will let sleeping dogs (or politicians) lie and move on—at least until January 2025. In this last bite at the legislative apple, I am doing something of reverse Olympia Olympics™ if you will—highlighting the best and worst proposals that sadly, or thankfully, did not become law this year. As a 501(c)(3) we cannot wish any proposed legislation dead. But we can, to paraphrase Clarence Darrow, “read their obituaries with great pleasure.”
Among the best that made it are some no-brainers, like a bill that finally formally prohibits child marriage. Some of the bad were just plain whacky—e.g., a bill seeking to allow anyone not subject to the state’s death penalty—including convicted sex offenders—to serve on a jury. Most, while not this unserious, could still easily have spelled some sort of large or small disaster for the Evergreen. Perhaps not a handful, on their own. But let us imagine (and shudder at) a world where all those obviously bad bills made it to the governor’s desk. Pretend all you like, but we all know a bad bill when we see one. As philosopher Robert Pirsig confusedly put it in his seminal Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “Quality . . . you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof!” Fortunately for us, the bills below have a Manichean quality to them. The bad are stupidly bad and the good strikingly so.
In Pirsig’s bohemian spirit of existential angst, let us proceed with the bad. First of the worst is HB 2114, one of the most high-profile of the session. The bill, based on Tacoma’s own recent barely-approved ballot initiative, would have made it nearly impossible for thousands of mom-and-pop landlords to earn a “reasonable rate of return” on their properties. Almost certainly unconstitutional, it also would have driven owners out of a residential rental market that is already experiencing chronic shortages. Another stinker was HB 1674, whose sponsors wanted every SUV in the state to have a warning label—you read that right. “Due to its size and weight, this vehicle likely poses increased risk to other roadway users.” Well, duh. The bill would have done nothing beyond constantly reminding Washington drivers how overregulated they are. Finally we have HB 2169, which on the surface aimed, nobly, to “create[e] a healthier environment” in state prisons. But among the means of doing so was the expansion of “painting and planting programs.” I am all for ensuring the incarcerated have the resources necessary to reintegrate into society. For this they need more vocational classes, not fingerpainting. Though not nearly as potentially disastrous as the Tacoma-inspired rent-control bill, this proposal would have made a mockery of effective rehabilitation.
Now what we have all been waiting for—drum roll—the best of the losers. In a sadly familiar political twist, the most sensible, bipartisan bills of the season crashed and burn while another the “Stripper Bill of Rights” passed with flying colors (though the passed bill is still in Governor Inslee’s lap, so to speak). HB 1915, for example, would have mandated that Washington schools require students take financial literacy courses. Ensuring that perfect remains the enemy of the good, the bill passed the House 97-0 but died once the Senate amended it to make such courses essentially optional. Next of the best was HB 2324, which would have created a Washington State Patrol team dedicated to monitoring fentanyl-related crimes. Washington really could have benefited from this one, especially considering our state ranks behind every other in our (very liberally defined) “neighborhood,” from California, up to British Columbia, and as far east as Minnesota.
Another winner that lost was HB 1245, permitting the subdivision of large residential lots down to 2,000 square feet in some zones. The bill would have expanded in-fill development opportunities, mostly in neighborhoods that are already fairly dense. This one should have succeeded where HB 2114 failed. Passing a major housing expansion bill would have been icing on our schadenfreude cake. Last but certainly not least, we have SB 5795, which would have finally rid us of the scourge of Western Civilization that is daylight-savings time. This same bill seems to fail year after year—not just in our state but across the country. For the life of me I have yet to hear two people give the same explanation for why we “need” this antiquarian’s oddity.
Each of these bills were fiscally sensible and socially responsible, so of course they died in committee or were amended into oblivion (a couple lucky ones made it to the floor, if for no other reason than to give the entire Pacific Northwest a glimpse of their demise).
There are a couple lessons here, I think. First, in a word, it was a whirlwind of a session this year. As I previously wrote, its speed and complexity was a bit dizzying—at least for this Washington politics neophyte. Second is this timeless nugget: that every legislative session—be it those of Iceland’s Althing (one of the oldest legislature in the world) or of our “beloved” Congress today—has its fair share of bills that never stand a chance. But these losers still serve an important function—especially the bipartisan ones. To wit, the bad ones remind all Washingtonians that despite ever-worsening political polarization, there is still some common ground on common sense. And the good ones serve as perennial reminders that there are still earnest, careful stewards of the public weal within our lawmakers’ ranks.
Alki,
Sam Spiegelman