Update on Senate Bill 6016

Pat yourselves on the back. Many of you responded to our request a few weeks ago to register your opposition (your "CON") on the legislature's webpage for SB 6016, which Senator Jessica Bateman wrote specifically to help BAR Holdings get built. You also responded to our request to ask questions during an online town hall event with Sen. Bateman, Rep. Parshley, and Rep. Doglio.

We are happy to report that in both cases, your actions made a real difference. As for the town hall, so many people asked questions about the bill in the chat that Rep. Parshley immediately granted our request to meet with her (within five minutes after the end of the town hall), after we had been trying to get a meeting for some time. Great work!

As for the senate hearing, your actions resulted in almost twice as many people registering "CON" as people registering "PRO." The chair of the senate committee reported the pro/con count at the bill's hearing, and it neutralized the developers' attempts to create a false appearance of community support for the bill. We heard that one of the developers had stayed up late the night before trying to get more people to sign up in support of the bill. But it didn't succeed because we had so many people on our side already.

A few weeks later, the bill passed out of the policy committee and is now in the Senate Rules Committee, which may be disappointing, but it was accompanied by a "minority report" by the vice chair of the policy committee. She is a senator from Whatcom County, which has similar sprawl threats as Thurston County. She was voicing her disagreement with the rest of the committee's decision to "recommend" that the bill be passed by the legislature. These minority reports carry weight with other legislators who are looking at which bills to give momentum to during this short session. We hope this will result in the bill being slowed down such that it dies before session ends.

Meanwhile, the identical "companion" bill in the House has not been scheduled for a hearing in the House policy committee. This is great news because it means the companion bill likely will die. February 4th is the last day for bills to be passed out of policy committees before they die.

One thing to be aware of is that even if the senate bill dies in the Rules Committee, the fact it made it out of the senate policy committee by February 4th means that next year, it can be revived again and will not have to go through the senate policy committee again. It can pick up where it left off (i.e., in the Rules Committee). Therefore, this is a multi-year fight. But we already knew it would be. We are prepared to fight as long as it takes for BAR Holdings' developers to give up. It could take 5 years or 20 years. We are in it for the long haul. Our future and the future of our children's children depend on it.