Senate comes to Spokane
OLYMPIA – The state Senate, long accustomed to gathering each fall in rainy Olympia, is instead coming to Spokane.
The lawmakers are holding their fall “committee assembly days” today and Tuesday at the Davenport Hotel, where – to the annoyance of some budget hawks – many lawmakers and staffers are also staying.
Among the topics: higher education, health care, economic development, taxes, mental health laws and farming. Many of the senators and staffers will also be visiting sites that the state has a stake in, like area parks, the North Spokane Corridor project, the Fox Theater and Washington State University’s Riverpoint Campus.
“It’s going to be a good chance for us to make some of the things we talk about more real,” said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, who pushed to hold the hearings in Spokane.
In addition to showing senators the region, she said, the hearings will give Spokanites a better sense of the wide variety of issues with which lawmakers wrestle.
“Everything from cleaning up the river to building a campus to trying to create jobs,” Brown said.
All the hearings are open to the public. Committees typically take public testimony on the topics they’re discussing, although comments are often limited to a minute or two.
The state House of Representatives is not expected to participate; it canceled its fall meeting.
One senator, Puyallup Democrat Jim Kastama, was so struck by the differences between the problems facing Eastern Washington and Western Washington that this spring he proposed a resolution to require the fall meetings to be held east of the mountains every year.
“I think it would be helpful if we got out behind the bubble of Olympia,” he told a Senate committee at the time. The proposal died, largely because of worries about the costs. But Brown pushed to hold the hearings in Spokane this year anyway. About 40 of the state’s 49 senators are expected to attend, along with nearly 50 staffers. Lobbyists and state-agency officials also are coming.
The state negotiated a rate of $99 a night plus tax per hotel room, far less than the Davenport’s usual $165 to $195 for a standard one- or two-bed room.
Nonetheless the total cost in Spokane will be about $30,000 to $35,000 more than meeting in Olympia, according to Senate estimates.
Some Republicans say that’s too much.
“It’s not a question of reaching out to people,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla. “It’s a matter of ‘Can we do it within our existing budget?’ ” To save money, he said, many of the Republicans will be staying only one night.
“It’s very nice that Lisa can bring the Legislature to her home district during this time,” said Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville. “What we have, though, is a future dilemma. How do we say ‘no’ next year to the Tri-Cities, Yakima, Bellingham or Vancouver?”
When Democrats first floated the idea, Republicans also speculated that the Spokane hearings might be just a convenient way to get Democrats – and lobbyists – together for a fundraiser for candidates such as Senate Democratic candidate Chris Marr. Not the case, Brown says.
“We’re not doing fundraising politics here,” she said, “unlike the traditional committee assembly days in Olympia, where a lot of those events take place.”
As for the extra cost of holding the hearings in Spokane, she said, “I believe it is well worth the expense to have this kind of interaction between citizens of Eastern Washington and state government.”
It’s hard to quantify the financial benefit of highlighting the region’s challenges and needs, she said.
“But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an actual dollars-and-cents payoff from having people seeing what we’re doing here,” she said.