Right to repair heads to House floor; Sound Transit revenue bill goes to Senate Rules

Two NPI pri­or­i­ty bills are on the move in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, with one week left to go until the 2022 cham­ber of ori­gin cut­off arrives.

HB 1810, spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson (D‑33rd Dis­trict: South King Coun­ty), has been placed on sec­ond read­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and could run on the floor when­ev­er lead­er­ship decides the time is ripe.

The bill requires com­pa­nies that make elec­tron­ics to either make doc­u­men­ta­tion, parts, and tools avail­able to own­ers and inde­pen­dent repair shops on “fair and rea­son­able terms,” or else pro­vide train­ing to allow busi­ness­es based in Wash­ing­ton to become man­u­fac­tur­er cer­ti­fied to car­ry out repairs.

69% of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sur­veyed on NPI’s behalf last Novem­ber said they sup­port­ed right to repair leg­is­la­tion, while only 13% were opposed. We unveiled our poll find­ing at HB 1810’s pub­lic hear­ing last month.

If HB 1810 gets a floor vote in the House before next Tues­day at 5 PM, it would be sent over the Sen­ate for fur­ther consideration.

Mean­while, over in the Sen­ate, leg­is­la­tion to give Sound Tran­sit more flex­i­bil­i­ty for fund­ing future tran­sit expan­sion projects has been sent up to the Rules Com­mit­tee by the Sen­ate Trans­porta­tion Committee.

SB 5528, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Jamie Ped­er­sen (D‑43rd Dis­trict: Seat­tle) got a do pass rec­om­men­da­tion at yes­ter­day’s Trans­porta­tion meeting.

The bill would allow Sound Tran­sit to cre­ate what are known as “enhanced ser­vice zones” with­in its juris­dic­tion. Fol­low­ing the cre­ation of such a zone (i.e. the City of Seat­tle), Sound Tran­sit could ask vot­ers with­in just that zone to levy a spe­cial motor vehi­cle excise tax and a com­mer­cial park­ing tax to accel­er­ate exist­ing projects or sys­tem plan­ning for future projects to ben­e­fit the region.

The roll call vote on the bill was as follows:

Vot­ing for a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Marko Liias, Rebec­ca Sal­daña, Annette Cleve­land, Mona Das,  Liz Lovelett, John Lovick, Joe Nguyen, T’wina Nobles, Emi­ly Ran­dall, and Claire Wil­son; Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Brad Hawkins and Tim Sheldon

Vot­ing for a “do not pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Phil For­tu­na­to and Mike Padden

Vot­ing for “with­out rec­om­men­da­tion”: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Cur­tis King, Jeff Holy, and Jeff Wilson

NPI’s research has found that more than sev­en in ten vot­ers in Seat­tle sup­port accel­er­at­ing Sound Tran­sit’s Phase III sys­tem expan­sion projects, which include light rail to Bal­lard to West Seat­tle. We released these find­ings last sum­mer in part­ner­ship with our friends at Seat­tle Sub­way, who are cham­pi­oning Sen­ate Bill 5528. As with every oth­er bill that has­n’t yet run on the floor, the leg­is­la­tion must be approved by the Sen­ate no lat­er than next Tues­day after­noon or it will go inac­tive for the remain­der of the leg­isla­tive session.

The 2022 leg­isla­tive ses­sion con­vened twen­ty-nine days ago, which means the mid­way point of the 2022 ses­sion is lat­er today.

In accor­dance with the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion, which lim­its even-num­bered year reg­u­lar ses­sions to six­ty days, the Leg­is­la­ture must adjourn Sine Die no lat­er than March 10th, 2022. The Leg­is­la­ture has the option of return­ing to con­tin­ue work­ing on one or more pri­or­i­ties in a spe­cial ses­sion, but Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive lead­er­ship is unlike­ly to sup­port such a move.