Reg­u­lar read­ers may recall that around this time last year, we launched a younger sib­ling to Pacif­ic NW Por­tal called the Olympia News­riv­er, which has the abil­i­ty to track what bills are mov­ing in the state­house on any giv­en day. The News­riv­er gets its name from Dave Win­er’s con­cept of a riv­er of news. It dis­plays bill updates in reverse chrono­log­i­cal order, sim­pli­fy­ing the task of fol­low­ing legislation.

The News­riv­er had a good first leg­isla­tive ses­sion in 2011, but now we need to get it ready for 2012… and we could use your help!

The 2012 leg­isla­tive ses­sion kicks off tomor­row, and pri­or­i­ty bills are going to start drop­ping quick­ly. The more assis­tance we get iden­ti­fy­ing pri­or­i­ty bills, the faster we can pro­gram them into the Newsriver.

(A pri­or­i­ty bill is a bill that one or more com­mu­ni­ties with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment feels strong­ly about. It could be a good bill worth sup­port­ing, or a bad bill worth stop­ping. Eli­gi­bil­i­ty is based on inter­est. When you nom­i­nate a bill, you’re let­ting us know there is inter­est in it).

Nom­i­nat­ing a bill for track­ing is sim­ple: just leave a com­ment on this post. Min­i­mal­ly, please pro­vide a bill num­ber. You may also describe your inter­est in the bill and let us know of any pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions that have tak­en posi­tions on the bill. You don’t need to pro­vide a list of spon­sors or bill text — we’ll see that infor­ma­tion when we look up the bill.

Bills pro­grammed into the News­riv­er are cat­e­go­rized under one of five topics:

We will estab­lish a sixth cat­e­go­ry for bud­get-relat­ed bills a lit­tle lat­er into the ses­sion. It is like­ly that the Leg­is­la­ture will be debat­ing putting a rev­enue pack­age before vot­ers in May. Any updates per­tain­ing to bills that have some­thing to do with a rev­enue ref­er­en­dum would go into the bud­get category.

We also wel­come your ideas for how to improve the News­riv­er. Leave a com­ment here, or con­tact us and let us know your thoughts.

We look for­ward to hear­ing from you!

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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4 replies on “Help us track the action in the statehouse: Nominate a bill for the Olympia Newsriver”

  1. Please track Bob Hasegawa’s bill cre­at­ing a Wash­ing­ton Invest­ment Trust. This bill could cre­ate thou­sands of jobs and save tax pay­ers hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars cur­rent­ly going towards Wall Street Mega Banks. By the way, the Res­o­lu­tions in favor of the Invest­ment trust have been passed by the WA Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus and the WA ST Dems and WSLC.

    1. Has Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Hasegawa pre­filed this bill for the 2012 leg­isla­tive session? 

      We did track this one last year. I think it was HB 1320.

  2. Hear­ing Thurs­day on Fitzgib­bon’s HB 2204 Elec­tion-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. Steve Zemke plans to tes­ti­fy. King Coun­ty Dems is track­ing as a priority.

  3. Pingback: Morning Rundown for January 10th, 2012

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