By Polly Keary, Editor
The close of the marathon legislative session in Olympia June 28 was the end of the beginning for two Sky Valley legislators.
For Kirk Pearson (R-Monroe) it was the end of his first session as a senator after many years of serving as a representative, and for Representative Elizabeth Scott, it was the end of her first session ever in government.
Last week both sat down with the Monroe Monitor to talk about what they were able to accomplish for the residents of the 39th District and the state as a whole. (Dan Kristiansen (R-Snohomish), the other representative of the 39th District, shared his account of the session in a guest editorial in the July 16 edition; find it here: tinyurl.com/mpd27s7).
Kirk Pearson
Pearson got one pleasant surprise when he arrived to serve in the state senate Jan. 14. Two Democrat senators crossed the aisle to join the 24 Republicans in the senate, giving Pearson's party the majority.
Another surprise he got that day was the news that he'd been named the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Parks Committee.
"Usually you know that sort of thing ahead of time," said Pearson over coffee last week. So he found himself scrambling to set up a schedule for hearings and issues.
On that committee, he worked to save some of Washington's state parks from potentially closing.
"I pushed through reforms to make our state parks more viable and put them on a firm foundation," he said. "I found the money in the budget to do that, to put $27 million into our state parks system."
And soon, sporting goods stores and similar businesses will be able to get a bulk rate on Discover Passes, the passes that allow people to use state parks, which typically cost $10 a day or $30 a year.
"So now if you buy a backpack, the store can offer you a free Discover Pass," said Pearson.
And some timber will be easier to harvest, following a deal Pearson worked out with the Department of Natural Resources.
"We extended contract harvesting on certain lands that they can't normally harvest, which will open up some sales," said Pearson. "It's a job creator, and it's money that will come into the schools' trust account."
Another bill the committee passed makes boat owners responsible for getting derelict boats out of the water.
"When you get your boat license, $1 will go to the cost of cleaning up derelicts, and allow us to track down who owns the vessels and recover some of the cost," said Pearson. "Some of these vessels have created a huge hazard environmentally. It was something I was happy to get passed."
Midway through the session, Pearson's workload doubled.
Mike Carrell, (R-Lakewood) senator for the 28th District, got leukemia and asked Pearson to take on the role of vice-chair of the Human Services and Corrections Committee.
Then Carrell, 69,had to leave the legislature to enter the hospital, where he succumbed to his illness.
That made Pearson chair of that committee, as well.
"It's rare to be chair of two committees," said Pearson. "I was handling a tremendous amount of bills and it was a tremendous amount of work."
While on that committee, though, he oversaw some other legislation, as well.
Among the bills that passed was one that closed up some opportunities for fraud in the child subsidy support payment system. And he established a new system in which people who traveled the furthest to testify at committee hearings got to speak first, rather than lobbyists.
"It was one reform I knew that was needed to show the public that they are why we were there, and they are most important," he said.
It was also Governor Jay Inslee's first session as governor, and his management style was distinctly different from that of previous governor Christine Gregoire, Pearson said.
"It was a big learning curve for him," he said.
Because the economy was begin to show signs of what could be fairly rapid growth compared to the previous four years, as well as disagreement about possible new spending, the legislature, which was supposed to finish up by April 28, went into special session twice to hash out the details and wait for new economic forecasts.
Pearson said he was pleased with the resulting budget, one of just two he has voted in favor of in 15 years.
"Just yesterday, the treasurer said our state credit rating went from negative to neutral, and we put $1 billion more into K-12, and the next two years there won't be any college tuition hikes and the last time that happened was 1986 or 7," said Pearson.
And he was able to win another $100,000 for the repair of Alder Street in Sultan, too, he said.
Because of the work Pearson did in his freshman year as senator, serving on two committees and getting an impressive number of bills passed, his colleagues have asked him to serve on the very powerful Rules Committee next year. That committee controls what proposed bills will get a hearing, and what bills will die for lack of attention.
"All in all, with everything, I was very happy," said Pearson. "It was a hard year, with a friend dying in the middle of it and us working to carry on with his vision for the committee, but I believe I did that well."
Serving in the Senate, Pearson said, is a lot of work, but he thinks he will be able to do more for the community than he was able to do as a representative.
"I've never been more active on issues than I am now, but I'm very happy," he said. "I can do much more for all my constituents."
Elizabeth Scott
The first few weeks in the House of Representatives were a bit of a whirlwind, said Elizabeth Scott, who was elected to her first term as a representative last fall.
"I knew it was going to be busy, and a campaign is actually good preparation for the level of busyness, but it could be overwhelming," she said last week. "There were back-to-back 15-minute appointments, sometimes double and triple-booked and people wanting to walk you to committee because they couldn't get an appointment."
She had to get up to speed on a dizzying array of issues, too.
I got information about everything from optometrists to beef cattle," she said. "Everyone has a lobby. You name it, there's a lobbyist for it."
But she made friends on both sides of the aisle right away, and got to work on the two committees to which she was appointed, Capital Budget, and Early Learning and Human Services.
One bill she worked on and was glad to see pass was one allowing ATVs to use more roads.
"In counties that aren't very populated, all the roads are now open to ATVs, and in counties like ours it opens up more roads than there used to be," she said.
Scott also said that she was inspired by the dedication and success of grass roots lobbyists, especially those who worked to halt a bill that would have required background checks for all gun sales in the state.
"Licensed dealers right now do background checks on purchasers," she said, noting that some gun shows require background checks, as well, "but if you want to sell to a friend, there's no paper record."
She expects to see the bill come back as a citizens' initiative, but believes the activists will push it back.
"In one week, I received 103 emails saying, 'Please protect the 2nd Amendment,' and three emails saying that we need more gun control," she said. "I was totally shocked at how much time I had to spend behind closed doors in the Republican caucus demanding that our 2nd Amendment be protected."
Another firearms issue on which Scott actually was the prime sponsor didn't pass.
"It would allow people with concealed carry permits to carry on school grounds," she said. "That bill did not get a hearing. Oregon and Idaho do have that law. They allow their school districts to decide."
She thought it was an important safety measure, she said.
"As a mom and a former teacher I said, 'How dare government tell me when I can protect myself and those in my care.'" she said. "I kept thinking of the principal at Sandy Hook who threw herself at the madman because she had no other weapon. It's terrible to leave people unprotected from psychos."
One bill of which she was the prime sponsor did pass, however.
"It's a bill to help the families of volunteer firefighters who are killed in the line of duty or a direct result," she said. "It increases their benefits. It's something the firefighters wanted. They pay into that themselves at no cost to the state. It fit my mantra of smaller, smarter government."
She said that it came as a surprise that, even though she was on the Capital Budget Committee, she wasn't very involved in the negotiations over the budget during the two special sessions.
"Only a few people on the budget committees actually work on the budget, and that handful were in Olympia a lot during the first special session," she said. "The rest of us were home meeting constituents."
Although she thinks that it would be better if the government didn't go into special session but rather completed their work in the allotted time, she said the sessions were worth the money they cost.
"The average cost of a day of special session is about $10,000, and when we are all down there it's $19,000," she said. "The cost of each day of special session is still less than the cost would be if we had given up and allowed the 10.5-cent gas tax increase."
Scott said that she wasn't impressed with the new governor.
"Inslee threw a wrench in the works, wanting policy bills that had been defeated to come back in special session," she said. "It wasn't constructive and he wound up changing his mind."
Scott is home for the summer, and then in November she'll start attending some committee meetings to prepare for the 2014 session.
Next year, she said, she wants to introduce a term limits bill that would limit congress members to three four-year terms in the Senate and three two-year terms in the House.
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