Spin Control: For good or ill, some bills you heard about aren’t going to become laws

The Legislature will hit the midpoint of its 60-day session Tuesday and while it’s too early to say for sure what it will do, it is possible to point to a few things that it won’t do.

Some of those “won’t dos” are things you may have read about and thought “What a great idea!”

Or more likely, “What a stupid idea!”

But it’s the nature of most sessions that certain ideas make a big splash, like a large rock in a lake, then sink to the bottom, out of sight. Here are some examples of things you may have heard about but that likely won’t be happening because they missed key deadlines:

Year-round Pacific Standard Time, which would save us all from changing our clocks twice a year, was a new take on previous efforts to keep the state on year-round daylight saving time. It got a committee hearing, but not a vote that would send it to the full Senate. The year-round daylight saving proposal needed several tries before making it through the full Legislature, so this failure wasn’t a big surprise. The key difference, however, is that passing year-round standard time does not take the approval of Congress, which year-round daylight savings does.

Allowing prison inmates to register to vote, also died in committee. It prompted discussions of democratic equity from some progressives but outrage from some conservative Republicans who conjured up images of serial killers sitting on juries – somehow ignoring the fact that they wouldn’t be let out of prison to sit through a trial. The Secretary of State’s office pointed out logistical problems of supplying ballots for prisoners who would be listed as residents from all over the state, and it also did not get a committee vote.

A separate bill to automatically register all eligible residents to vote unless they opt out, and require all registered voters to cast ballots even if they cast blank ones, got a second look after failing to get out of the Senate last year. Democrats on the Senate State Government and Elections Committee passed it over Republican objections, but had to send it to the Transportation Committee because of costs to the Department of Licensing for creating and processing new forms for people who wanted to waive their voting rights when getting their driver’s licenses. As of Friday, it had not been scheduled for a vote out of that committee before Monday’s deadline.

A proposal to keep cities and counties from adding features to their public projects that would discourage homeless people from using that space got as far as a committee hearing, but no further. Admittedly, the bill drafted by some students had technical problems with something known as “hostile architecture.” But lawmakers might have been a bit embarrassed with the prospect of the state telling local governments that they couldn’t do things to discourage homeless gatherings after the state Department of Transportation spent a reported $700,000 putting boulders along highway rights-of-way after clearing out encampments. One advocate for the homeless said the state should stop “treating people like pigeons that you want to disappear.”

The bill to increase penalties for harassing people attempting to collect signatures on initiatives and referendums also generated some sparks in a committee hearing, with conflicting views of protecting free speech or free elections. There was also a question of whether people receiving a bounty for collecting signatures should get more protection than other people subject to harassment, like women entering a medical building where abortion foes are demonstrating. The debate is ongoing; the bill didn’t get voted out of committee.

The impetus for those proposed signature-gathering protections was the record six initiatives to the Legislature that were certified last month thanks to the record $6 million spent on signature bounties. As the certification for each initiative was announced by the Secretary of State’s office, Republican supporters of the proposals bemoaned the lack of hearings scheduled for them by Democratic majority leaders. A demonstration on the Capitol steps last week drew a moderate-sized crowd but far below the numbers generated by either side of the abortion debate or the gun rights vs. gun control protests.

While it’s true, as GOP supporters say, that initiatives take precedence over most matters before the Legislature, that also means they aren’t subject to deadlines like other legislation and could be scheduled for a hearing or a vote any time. Even without a hearing or a vote, they’ll be on the November ballot.

A proposed law that Washington motorists always drive with their headlights on – something that studies say could reduce the number of accidents – got a brief airing. Supporters noted that motorcyclists already face a similar requirement. Opponents suggested such a proposal would make it easier to pull over people on flimsy pretexts and harder to tell whether the taillights in the car ahead are on because of the law or lit because the vehicle is stopping. The unanswered question seemed to be whether the “running lights” that many cars have when the engine is on would be enough to satisfy the law.

A sure bet for a hearing with a spirited debate seemed to be a bill filed in the second week of the session that would have made it a felony for demonstrators to block a highway without a permit. (Presumably, no such permit would ever be issued.)

It was a response to the closure of Interstate 5 through downtown Seattle on Jan. 6 by groups calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, and happened as some West Side lawmakers might have been heading to Olympia for the start of the session two days later. The bill had support from most of the House Republican Caucus and might have gained traction from Seattle Democrats whose constituents had to deal with the traffic mess. Sent to the Community Safety, Justice and Reentry Committee, it never got a hearing.

Bills like these and hundreds of others that didn’t get voted out of the necessary committees by certain deadlines have extremely bad outlooks. It’s not quite accurate to say they are dead until the Legislature adjourns for good, because a bill can occasionally be revived through parliamentary maneuvering. But that’s rare and the bills mentioned here don’t seem to be candidates for such legislative legerdemain.