NPI’s even year elections bill advances out of Senate State Government Committee

NPI’s pri­or­i­ty leg­is­la­tion to give cities and towns the free­dom to switch their elec­tions to even years has cleared anoth­er key hur­dle in the leg­isla­tive process.

Today, a major­i­ty of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee vot­ed to give HB 1932, prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson, a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion, send­ing it on to the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, where its sib­ling, Sen­ate Bill 5723, has been hiber­nat­ing for more than a year.

HB 1932 would change an old state law dat­ing back to the 1960s that requires munic­i­pal­i­ties to hold their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions in odd-num­bered years. Under our leg­is­la­tion, they would gain the free­dom to switch to even years if they want­ed, but they would­n’t be required to change their timing.

HB 1932 was vot­ed out of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ear­li­er this month and was heard in the Sen­ate last Fri­day. It need­ed to get a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion at today’s com­mit­tee meet­ing to remain active, because tomor­row is the cut­off for oppo­site cham­ber pol­i­cy bills.

Due to the brevi­ty of the 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, com­mit­tees only had a few days to hear and report out bills from the oppo­site chamber.

The Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee had to sched­ule an extra com­mit­tee meet­ing last Thurs­day evening just to accom­mo­date all of the House bills per­tain­ing to its area of focus that it want­ed to con­sid­er. Today, its list of bills slat­ed for action in exec­u­tive ses­sion totaled twen­ty-one, includ­ing HB 1932.

Most of the list of twen­ty-one bills were vot­ed out effi­cient­ly, but not HB 1932. Repub­li­cans, evi­dent­ly hop­ing to sink the leg­is­la­tion, engaged in a time-wast­ing exer­cise of try­ing amend it almost a dozen dif­fer­ent ways, forc­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty to rhyth­mi­cal­ly mow down their amendments.

One of those amend­ments, offered by Jeff Wil­son, tried to res­ur­rect Tim Eyman’s now dead push polls, which this orga­ni­za­tion and Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (who took point in respond­ing to the Repub­li­cans’ pro­pos­als) were respon­si­ble for abol­ish­ing last year in tan­dem with State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amy Walen.

Anoth­er amend­ment, offered by Phil For­tu­na­to, odd­ly tried to exclude the 31st Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (which For­tu­na­to rep­re­sents) from the legislation.

Addi­tion­al amend­ments were sourced from the House Repub­li­can cau­cus, which pro­posed a slew of changes to HB 1932 when it was on the House floor.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty took only one amend­ment, from Kud­er­er, which mod­i­fied the scope of the bill to make it resem­ble Sen­ate Bill 5723, the leg­is­la­tion the com­mit­tee con­sid­ered last year. The bill now only per­tains to cities and towns — school dis­tricts, ports, and oth­er lev­els of local gov­ern­ment are no longer includ­ed in the bill and would not gain the free­dom to choose their own elec­tion timing.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sen­a­tor Kud­er­er’s amend­ment spec­i­fies that cities and towns wish­ing to switch must do so through a vote of both their gov­ern­ing body and a vote of the peo­ple, rather than just one or the oth­er. Like SB 5723, the bill still allows cities and towns any­where in Wash­ing­ton to switch to even years.

The vote to send HB 1932 on up to Rules was 4–3:

Vot­ing for a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Sam Hunt, Pat­ty Kud­er­er, Javier Valdez, and Bob Hasegawa

Vot­ing for a “do not pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jeff Wil­son, Phil For­tu­na­to, and Per­ry Dozier

If HB 1932 gets pulled from Rules, select­ed for floor action, and passed either in its cur­rent form or with fur­ther changes, it would then return to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The House could choose to con­cur in the Sen­ate’s amend­ments, or it could ask the Sen­ate to recede from its amendments.

In the event that the Sen­ate chose to recede from its amend­ments, the bill would revert to its pri­or incar­na­tion. If the House vot­ed to accept the Sen­ate amend­ments, the bill would go to Gov­er­nor Inslee. Oth­er­wise, the bill would go to con­fer­ence, allow­ing the two cham­bers to nego­ti­ate a final com­pro­mise version.

NPI thanks Sen­a­tors Hunt, Kud­er­er, Valdez, and Hasegawa for pri­or­i­tiz­ing this impor­tant, much-need­ed leg­is­la­tion. Their vote today gives this bill a chance to be con­sid­ered by the full Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate between now and March 1st.

Fol­low this link to urge your state sen­a­tor to sup­port HB 1932.