2023 Legislative Update: Week 6

Friday, February 17 was house of origin policy cutoff where all bills referred to a policy committee had to be passed out of committee by that date. The week was filled with tight hearings and committee votes. Those that didn’t get out of committee are now considered dead. The exception are bills deemed necessary to implement the budget (NTIB).

After the cutoff on Friday, the upcoming week will largely be fiscal committee hearings and executive sessions. Fiscal week is always one of the more intense times during session. Fiscal committees include the House fiscal committees (Appropriations, Capital Budget, and Finance), Senate Ways and Means, and the House or Senate Transportation Committee. Bills referred to these committees needed to get voted out by Friday, February 24th, which gives many of them just one week to get scheduled for both a hearing and executive session. This means that the week will be filled with long hearings (sometimes very long) in fiscal committees. Testimony in fiscal committees differs from policy committees in that fiscal chairs request testifiers to speak to the fiscal aspects of the bill, rather than make a policy case.

Because of concerns about the state’s fiscal landscape, and a number of big-ticket items that have to be addressed (e.g. the collective bargaining agreements, behavioral health and homelessness, etc.), many bills simply won’t make it or will be amended in order to bring the fiscal note down.

There are several bills scheduled for a hearing this coming week that may be of interest to the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce:

• HB 1670: Raising the limit factor for property taxes

• SB 5334: Providing a local government option for the funding of essential affordable housing programs

• SSB 5412: Reducing local governments’ land use permitting workloads

• HB 1628: Increasing the supply of affordable housing by modifying the state and local real estate excise tax

• HB 1832: Implementing a per mile charge on vehicles usage of public roadways

• SHB 1513: Improving traffic safety

• SHB 1363: Concerning vehicular pursuits

• SSB 5120: Establishing 23-hour crisis relief centers in Washington state

• SHB 1134: Implementing the 988 behavioral health crisis response and suicide prevention system

• SHB 1389: Concerning residential rent increases under the residential landlord-tenant act and the manufactured/mobile home landlord-tenant act

TVW’s Legislative Review does clips each day highlighting some of the hot topics of the day. You can find links to the Legislative Review videos here.

Session Primers

A Primer on Null & Void and Subject to Appropriations

During executive sessions in both the House Appropriations and Senate Ways & Means Committees this week, a lot of bills will be amended to include a ‘Null and Void’ or ‘Subject to Appropriation’ clause. When a bill has this language added, depending on where it is placed it means either a section or subsection of a bill or the bill in its entirety is invalid unless funding is provided in the budget by a specified date.

The intention behind these clauses is to prevent a bill, or a component of a bill, from being enacted that doesn’t end up getting the money needed to implement it. Both Democrats and Republicans will propose null and void clauses. It is standard practice in the fiscal committees for these to be added to most bills and they are often done by a verbal amendment.

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