Today was a ban­ner day for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s 2020 leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties. Three key pol­i­cy bills on our list — all still alive thanks to Sen­ate action ear­li­er in the ses­sion — each received votes today to advance out of their com­mit­tees of ori­gin in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. To get to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk, these bills will need to be vot­ed upon by the full House.

Here’s an overview of each bill.

Comprehensive sexual health education

Sen­ate Bill 5395, which has attract­ed sig­nif­i­cant Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion in the House, advanced on a vote of nine to eight after fail­ing to get out of the House Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee last year. The bill was heard in com­mit­tee last Thurs­day, with right wing par­ents show­ing up en masse to con­demn it.

It has thank­ful­ly moved for­ward and remains alive ahead of tomor­row’s cut­off for pol­i­cy bills enact­ed by the oth­er cham­ber to get out of committee.

The bill advanced on a par­ty-line vote, with the com­mit­tee’s nine Democ­rats giv­ing the bill a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion and the eight Repub­li­cans vot­ing nay.

Rec­om­mend­ing “do pass”: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Sharon Tomiko San­tos (Chair), Lau­rie Dolan (Vice Chair), Dave Paul (Vice Chair), Steve Bergquist, Lisa Callan, Lil­lian Ortiz-Self, Mon­i­ca Jura­do Stonier, My-Linh Thai, Javier Valdez

Rec­om­mend­ing “do not pass”: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mike Steele (Rank­ing Mem­ber), Bob McCaslin (Assis­tant Rank­ing Mem­ber), Mike Volz (Assis­tant Rank­ing Mem­ber), Michelle Caldier, Chris Cor­ry, Paul Har­ris, Skyler Rude, Alex Ybarra

Request­ed by State Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal and spon­sored by State Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son, the bill is intend­ed to help young peo­ple at many dif­fer­ent stages of child­hood and young adult­hood make bet­ter deci­sions about their health and their future. The House Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee amend­ed the bill, so it will need Sen­ate con­cur­rence to clear the Legislature.

The orig­i­nal bill’s main pro­vi­sions, as sum­ma­rized by the staff of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus are as follows:

• Expand com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum to all grade 6–12 schools across the state, phased in over sev­er­al years;
• Phase in age-appro­pri­ate cur­ricu­lum for K‑5 grades; and
• Allow par­ents to exempt chil­dren from sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion class­es on request.

SB 5395 passed the Sen­ate ear­li­er this month.

Banning single use plastic bags

NPI Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Andrew Vil­leneuve leads a press con­fer­ence announc­ing the release of new research show­ing strong sup­port for a plas­tic bag ban (Pho­to: Car­olyn Barclift/NPI)

Sen­a­tor Mona Das’ SB 5323 also received a vote in its com­mit­tee of ori­gin today. The House Com­mit­tee on Envi­ron­ment & Ener­gy, chaired by the incom­pa­ra­ble Joe Fitzgib­bon, opt­ed to replace the bill with a new ver­sion (known in leg­isla­tive par­lance as a strik­er) that also bans sin­gle use plas­tic bags.

The bill then received a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion from the committee.

Impres­sive­ly, the vote was unan­i­mous. It looks like this is the year for this bill!

Rec­om­mend­ing “do pass”: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Joe Fitzgib­bon (Chair), Debra Lekanoff (Vice Chair), Beth Doglio, Jake Fey, Jared Mead, June Robin­son, Sharon Shew­make; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Richard DeBolt (Rank­ing Mem­ber), Mary Dye (Assis­tant Rank­ing Mem­ber), Matt Boehnke, Kei­th Goehner

NPI Vice Pres­i­dent-Sec­re­tary Diane Jones tes­ti­fied in sup­port of SB 5323 at its hear­ing last Thurs­day, explain­ing that 69% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sur­veyed by NPI’s poll­ster PPP expressed sup­port for a statewide ban on sin­gle use plas­tic bags.

We are delight­ed to see the bill move for­ward with bipar­ti­san support.

The strik­ing amend­ment sub­stan­tial­ly changes the orig­i­nal bill. The new lan­guage dif­fers from the orig­i­nal as fol­lows, accord­ing to House non­par­ti­san staff:

• Requires bags used at retail estab­lish­ments to com­ply with label­ing require­ments for com­postable and non­com­postable bags and prod­ucts estab­lished in state law in 2019, rather than cre­at­ing a sec­ond set of stan­dards for the label­ing of com­postable bags;
• Exempts mail­ing pouch­es and sealed envelopes from require­ments on car­ry­out bags pro­vid­ed to cus­tomers by retail establishments;
• Mod­i­fies the recy­cled con­tent require­ments for reusable film plas­tic bags to require a min­i­mum of 20% recy­cled con­tent until July 1, 2022, and a min­i­mum of 40% thereafter;
• Requires reusable film plas­tic bags to dis­play the mil thick­ness in print on the exte­ri­or of the bag, in addi­tion to the post­con­sumer recy­cled content;
• Pro­vides that enforce­ment of bag restric­tions must be based on com­plaints filed with the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy (Depart­ment) or with local juris­dic­tions, and pro­vides for the Depart­ment to estab­lish a forum where local gov­ern­ments may file com­plaints for enforce­ment pur­pos­es by the Depart­ment or where local gov­ern­ments may review com­plaints filed with the Depart­ment for pur­pos­es of con­duct­ing edu­ca­tion and outreach;
• Autho­rizes edu­ca­tion­al ele­ments regard­ing car­ry­out bag restric­tions and the ben­e­fits of reusable bags to be cre­at­ed by local gov­ern­ments, and requires Depart­ment or local gov­ern­ment train­ing of employ­ees as part of the edu­ca­tion­al ele­ment to occur no lat­er than Octo­ber 1, 2020;
• Amends the pre­emp­tion pro­vi­sions to pro­vide that (1) car­ry­out bag ordi­nances not enact­ed as of April 1, 2020, are pre­empt­ed; (2) car­ry­out bag ordi­nances enact­ed as of April 1, 2020, are pre­empt­ed effec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2021; and (3) local gov­ern­ments that have estab­lished a pass-through charge of ten cents are not pre­empt­ed with respect to the amount of the pass-through charge; and
• Requires the Depart­ment to sub­mit a report to the Leg­is­la­ture by Octo­ber 1, 2023, address­ing the effec­tive­ness of the pass-through charge and the cost of autho­rized bags to retail estab­lish­ments rel­a­tive to the pass-through charge, eval­u­at­ing the 2.25 mil reusable plas­tic bags, and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for revi­sions to the Act.

As with SB 5395, the Sen­ate must sign off on these changes for the bill to leave the Leg­is­la­ture. The Sen­ate can refuse to do so, in which case the House would be asked to recede from its amend­ments. If the House chose not to recede, then a con­fer­ence com­mit­tee would be appoint­ed to nego­ti­ate a final version.

Death penalty abolition

Time for abo­li­tion in Wash­ing­ton State: End the death penalty

At the same time the Edu­ca­tion and Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tees were meet­ing to con­sid­er the afore­men­tioned bills, the House Pub­lic Safe­ty Com­mit­tee was meet­ing to dis­cuss Sen­ate Bill 5339, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Reuven Car­lyle. This bill repeals Wash­ing­ton’s now inac­tive death penal­ty statute, end­ing the prac­tice of putting peo­ple to death for the crime of murder.

The Sen­ate has passed this bill for three con­sec­u­tive ses­sions, but it has­n’t received a vote on the floor of the House. How­ev­er, it did get a vote of con­fi­dence from the Pub­lic Safe­ty Com­mit­tee, chaired by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Roger Goodman.

The com­mit­tee reject­ed three Repub­li­can amend­ments, all spon­sored by Jen­ny Gra­ham, pri­or to tak­ing a final vote to advance the bill.

Gra­ham is a vocal pro­po­nent of exe­cu­tions who fer­vent­ly — and wrong­ly — believes that abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty will result in con­vict­ed mur­der­ers get­ting out of prison and hurt­ing more people.

Gra­ham’s sis­ter was one of the vic­tims of Gary Ridg­way, the Green Riv­er Killer, who is locked up in Wal­la Wal­la in the Wash­ing­ton State Pen­i­ten­tiary.

There is no evi­dence — I repeat, no evi­dence — that elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty encour­ages peo­ple to com­mit more crimes, but Gra­ham and oth­ers con­tin­ue to disin­gen­u­ous­ly argue that the prospect of an exe­cu­tion is a deterrent.

The com­mit­tee did not change the bill. If the full House approves it as is, it can go to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk for his sig­na­ture with­out fur­ther action in the Senate.

The par­ty-line vote was as follows:

Rec­om­mend­ing “do pass”: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Roger Good­man (Chair), Lau­ren Davis (Vice Chair), Sher­ry Apple­ton (Sec­ond Vice Chair), John Lovick, Tina Orwall, Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Eric Pettigrew

Rec­om­mend­ing “do not pass”: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brad Klip­pert (Rank­ing Mem­ber), Robert Suther­land (Assis­tant Rank­ing Mem­ber), Jen­ny Gra­ham, Dan Griffey

In 2018, NPI unveiled research show­ing that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans of all polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies sup­port abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty and replac­ing it with a form of life in prison. Amaz­ing­ly, even Trump sup­port­ers favor, by a slight plu­ral­i­ty, life in prison alter­na­tives, as do an out­right major­i­ty of Republicans.

We will con­tin­ue to lob­by in sup­port of all three of these bills and track their progress in the remain­ing days of the 2020 leg­isla­tive session.