Will third time be a charm for bills Washington House keeps passing?

OLYMPIA – Members of the House like some bills so much they were willing to pass them for a third time Thursday.

They gave strong support – yet again – to better protections for Washington residents using the internet, for letting high school seniors get their diplomas without passing certain assessment tests, and for restructuring the way restitution and penalties are paid off from court judgments.

In all, more than two dozen bills moved quickly through the House for a third time, usually with little debate. Several lawmakers said they’d run out of new things to say for or against a particular bill they’d debated as recently as three weeks ago.

The House also passed a brand new bill designed to fix a bill the full Legislature passed in the regular session.

Earlier this year, lawmakers put restrictions on state agencies that want to collect “biometric identifiers” without the permission of the person being examined or tested. But that bill was so comprehensive that it could be applied to the collection of fingerprints and DNA in criminal cases. A revision that passed the House unanimously allows law enforcement and corrections agencies to collect fingerprints and DNA without consent.

Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, said the original bill had hearings in the House and Senate, went through both chambers with only one no vote and was sent to state agencies for their review. Objections weren’t raised until it had been sent to the governor. He signed the original bill and the Legislature agreed to come up with what Smith called a “cleanup bill.”

The rules of the Legislature require any bill written by a state representative that passed the House but didn’t become law to pass the House again after a special session starts. A similar rule governs bills from the Senate.

The second special session started Tuesday. Although its main goal is to reach an agreement on a 2017-19 operating budget for most state programs and salaries, the Legislature can pass laws on other topics.

On Thursday, members of the House proved they weren’t giving up on a bill that would bar internet service providers from selling their customers’ data without permission.

Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, said Congress is looking at a variety of bills that could ban the practice nationwide, but in the meantime the state has to consider protecting its citizens’ privacy in the face of technology that keeps getting more complicated.

Rep. David Taylor, R-Moxee, opposed the bill, contending it only addressed part of the issue by placing restrictions on ISPs but leaving entities like Google, Facebook and Twitter alone.

They again gave overwhelming support to a bill that would not require high school students to pass assessment tests in reading, writing, math and science while the state develops better tests. The assessment tests were designed to measure how the system is doing, not to have scores applied to individual students, sponsors said.

That bill would allow hundreds of seniors to graduate without passing the assessment tests if they have completed all other requirements.

Court fines, penalties and restitution orders – known as legal financial obligations – would be restructured so that victims would receive full restitution first, and interest that could be charged on fines and penalties would be reduced.

Courts can now collect 12 percent interest. The bill currently has the interest rate for those charges at 0 percent, but Rep. Jeff Holy, R-Cheney, said the Senate is likely to raise it to 4 percent.

Rep. Brad Klippert, R-Kennewick, said the Legislature should leave the interest rate at 12 percent because the people paying the LFOs are criminals who need to learn a lesson.

“It’s got to be hard,” Klippert said. “It’s part of the process, they’ve got to push through to the end.”

But Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, said the high interest rates are creating a type of “debtor’s prison,” keeping people from being able to afford a car to go to work and become taxpayers and hurting their families.

In other action, the House approved setting up a new Department of Children, Youth and Families by combining parts of the Department of Social and Health Services with the Department of Early Learning. It also called for expanding the Opportunity Scholarship Program and developing a program to help veterans in rural and remote areas.