VOTER INTERESTS PROJECT: Rough Notes from the Virtual Town Hall

The 10th Districts legislators, Sen. Ron Muzzall (R-Oak Harbor), Rep. Greg Gilday (R-Camano Island), and Rep. Dave Paul (D-Oak Harbor) held a virtual town hall meeting via Zoom on Saturday, March 12. Attendees were asked to submit questions when registering for the meeting. Moderator Molly Hughes, the mayor of Coupeville, distilled the questions submitted into six topics of discussion. After the legislators covered these topics, additional questions were fielded from the chat comments during the meeting. The meeting lasted 91 minutes.

Watch the meeting on Rep. Dave Paul’s Facebook page at this link.

What follows are our rough notes of the questions and responses. Summaries below are from our notes taken during the meeting, and should not be considered direct quotes by the legislators. Each heading below includes a time code for the approximate start of the topic within the video.

Introductory comments (0:00:00)

Two-boat ferry service on the Mukilteo-Clinton and Coupeville-Port Townsend runs (0:05:12)

Rep. DAVE PAUL: We have revived the Ferry Caucus, of which I am the vice chair. We put ferries front and center in the budget, with $1.6B to help ferry services, including funding for four new hybrid-electric ferries. We are fully funding Washington State Ferries (WSF) requests, and are pressing WSF on recruitment. They’ve just graduated a new class of mates and are hiring oilers. The Clinton-Mukilteo route is the next in line (after Seattle-Bainbridge) to have two-boat service restored. Last week’s problem was a vessel issue in addition to a crewing issue. Coupeville will be the last route in the service plan to return to two-boat service.

Sen. RON MUZZALL: Ferries depend on the legislature for funding, but the Department of Transportation (WSDOT) reports to the Governor. The legislature cannot directly order WSF. The legislature has made its displeasure clear, but this crewing issue dates back years. The problem has been exacerbated by COVID and a large batch of retirements. The Mukilteo-Clinton route is the no. 3 priority in the whole system. Fares are used to pay for operational costs; the Mukilteo-Clinton route leads the WSF system with 85% farebox recovery. But this is ultimately an issue the Governor has to resolve.

Rep. GREG GILDAY: This problem has been building for a while 00 and we had a “silver tsunami of retirements,” which was badly managed by WSF. We also need to look at how we are paying crews — when oilers can get twice the money from private boats, we lose crewmembers. This problem will take time to solve.

Revenue forecasts show a large surplus: what do you propose to do with the extra revenue (0:12:00)

GILDAY: I wanted to see some given back in tax relief. The surplus is $15B; the majority party’s budget didn’t give any substantial tax relief, which is needed given high inflation. I supported a Senate bill for a 1% reduction in the sales tax. I would also have put more money into the “rainy-day” fund. The majority’s budget put the bare minimum into the fund. The rainy-day fund is constitutionally-protected. The budget as passed has a huge spending plan, but only put $200M in reserve.

MUZZALL: In this inflationary period, we expect a recession afterward, triggered by a lack of consumer confidence. Food prices depend on fuel prices which are way up. I would have put more money into the rainy day fund; we took a lot of money out during the last two years. I favored a gas tax holiday for the remainder of the year, and other tax relief, but my priority would have been to the rainy day fund.

PAUL: I sponsored a sales-tax holiday bill which passed the House but died in the Senate. The Senate prioritized B&O (business and occupation) tax relief for small businesses, and I supported this. I’m disappointed that the sales-tax holiday did not pass. Next year, a bipartisan, bicameral working group is proposing meaningful tax reform, including B&O, property, and sales tax reforms. There are three savings accounts: our budget builds the rainy day fund back up to earlier levels in four years; the secondary savings fund (to which the rainy day fund money was transferred during COVID) will be re-funded in two years. We’re using operating dollars for ferries, and added more money into the Capital Budget.

What are you working on for climate change? (0:20:25)

MUZZALL: Several bills would have addressed that: one for schools and other public buildings. This bill passed, but I opposed it because it will be very expensive: switching to electric heat will be very costly. A Growth Management Act bill would have impacted permitting to build needed housing. We’re a quarter-million homes shy statewide. We work on climate change daily on our farm to improve energy efficiency. We also worked on a bill to affect pollution and oil companies.

PAUL: In years past, we focused a lot on the transportation sector, the largest source of greenhouse gases in the state. We’re moving ferries to electric power to save emissions. We looked at the impact of housing on climate change — buildings are the second larges source of emissions. We want to avoid increasing the cost of housing. The situation in Ukraine is a reason to get off of fossil fuels. I’m proud of the work done on the derelict vessel bills to help get abandoned boats out of the waterway.

GILDAY: A lot of the issues involve making the tradeoffs that make sense. I’m not sure that electrifying the ferries makes sense: a diesel boat costs $145M and electric boats are north of $200M. House Republicans put forward the ORCA plan last year, and one of the big points in that plan is forest management. 25% of greenhouse gas emissions in California last year came from forest fires. One thing we did pass was outdoor school for kids — getting kids outside gets them to experience the environment and teaches them about their impacts.

Senate Bill 5909: emergency powers. (0:28:37)

PAUL: We should have done something about emergency powers. There were two bills (one House, one Senate): the House bill died in committee; I followed the Senate bill. The legislature only meets 2-4 months of the year, so the Governor needs to be able to declare emergencies, but the legislature also plays a role. The other party added too many amendments and we had to kill the bill in order to proceed to other bills. I’m very frustrated that the bill didn’t get passed.

MUZZALL: I’m incredibly frustrated: the three branches of government need to hold each other accountable. The legislature is locked out of oversight under the current rules. Senate Bill 5909 (SB5909) was a “paper tiger.” The GOP offered many amendments but none were accepted. The bill was a do-nothing bill. Most Republicans ended up voting against the bill (in the Senate) but the majority passed it. The Republicans want reform, but cannot get the Democrats on board. No one ever imagined emergency powers lasting this long, and if the governor were of a different party from the legislative majority, the powers would not have been in effect this long.

GILDAY: I co-sponsored a bill that would require legislative assent to continue an emergency longer than sixty days. SB5909 requires unanimity between the “four corners” (Ed. Note: this refers to the leadership of each party in both the House and the Senate) to end the emergency. Rep. Paul’s claim that it was GOP obstruction doesn’t hold water: House Democrats shut down debate on the first amendment to the bill after only 25 minutes. We need emergency powers reform: we’ve been governed by proclamation for two and a half years. The majority party has ceded legislative authority to the executive.

Proposals on firearms passed by the legislature (0:37:18)

GILDAY: Three gun bills were passed this session and I voted against all of them. The first prohibited building your own firearms. This eliminates the hobbyists but does nothing to prevent criminals from getting “untraceable” guns. The second prohibited open carry in school board meetings, which I opposed on constitutional rights, although I see no need to open carry in these meetings. The third limits magazines to ten rounds. Ten rounds is not “high capacity,” but a rather normal capacity. Also, the bill says you cannot transfer magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but does not prohibit ownership of magazines that hold more than ten rounds. This does nothing, and it doesn’t make sense.

MUZZALL: The incidence of gun violence is atrocious and we need a more aggressive stance against it. The Senate Republicans offered many options: increased penalties for stealing firearms, for crime committed with firearms, etc. Gun violence is often a crime of recidivism. The problem with these laws is that they don’t necessarily stop gun violence. I voted against the “ghost gun” bill; the language of the bill was not clear enough, and most people who build these guns will never commit crimes. On the high capacity magazines bill,: for Washington to pass this bill without similar laws in neighboring states does nothing to reduce gun violence. The no-open-carry-in-schools bill will have a negative impact on ROTC programs. I don’t see the need for open carry, but I am concerned about the unintended consequences of the bill.

PAUL: This is probably the topic on which I received the most emails this session. The district seems pretty evenly divided on the subject. I talked with law enforcement officials about the ghost gun and high-capacity magazine issues. With the ghost guns, people will still be able to build them, but they will have to go to a gun dealer and get a serial number stamped on them, which seems like a reasonable compromise. On open carry — I grew up in a hunting community, but I see open carry at school board meetings as a form of intimidation. Regarding the high-capacity magazines: after talking with a mom from Sandy Hook, I could not vote against this bill.

House Bill 1868 (HB1868): Hospital staffing standards for overtime, rest breaks, etc. (0:47:07)

MUZZALL: There is a big discrepancy between small rural hospitals and urban hospitals. Small rural hospitals have better staffing than urban hospitals. However, there are thousands of open nursing positions in Washington — an extreme nursing shortage. Passing this bill while this shortage continues seems disingenuous: how do you get enough nurses to meet the new standards? We’re working on getting more nurses, but adding this standard adds “salt in the wounds”. No one is intentionally understaffing. This bill wouldn’t change that, but just make it more difficult for the people trying to staff the hospitals.

PAUL: I supported the bill. I understand the concern about the nursing shortage, and I passed a bill a couple of years ago to increase salaries for nursing faculty in college. Two years ago, I was in the hospital at the end of the session and talked with nurses about a bill we had passed to make sure they get breaks. When I could get people to talk about the subject, I found that people are often pulled out of breaks. This bill died in the final days of the session, but I would have enforced the rest breaks bill.

GILDAY: I did not support this bill. Other states such as California have tried staffing ratio laws, but their ratios are worse than ours now. It’s just not working and we don’t need to put one more thing on our hospitals when they are overtaxed, especially if it’s not going to work. We don’t have enough nurses to fulfill the requirements of the bill; a better option would be to work to increase supply of nurses.

Introduction of questions submitted by meeting attendees (0:53:10)

Who actually writes the bills you sponsor? (0:53:48)

PAUL: Caucus staff and non-partisan staff who work for the legislature. The bills are then sent to code revisers to conform with proper form. The other way a bill gets written is from the executive branch, which has their own bill writing staff. The abandon boat bill came from [Commissioner of Public Lands] Hilary Franz’s office.

MUZZALL: Two of the bills I offered came out of professional organizations: one was on physicians’ health and one was on occupational therapists. Each caucus has a staff of attorneys that write the bill, then it is forwarded to the code reviser. But some ideas get shot down because they are great ideas but not great bills.

GILDAY: All the kudos for good bills should go to staff; all the blame for bad bills should go to lawmakers who aren’t clear about what they want.

Insurance Commissioner ruling to disallow use of credit scores results in rate increases (0:57:34)

MUZZALL: I met with [Insurance Commissioner Mike] Kreidler on this over a year ago. Kreidler wanted to get this process through the legislature for “equity” reasons. The bill didn’t pass the legislature and Kreidler passed the process as a ruling. It was thrown out by the courts, but Kreidler put it in place again. The legislature does not have control over the independently-elected Insurance Commissioner.

PAUL: I was pretty unhappy with the Commissioner’s actions; he made this ruling. There’s no doubt that there are equity problems with using credit scores — there is some bias, and insurers are pretty protective of their algorithms. But if you talk to the “good actors” in the industry, they had alternatives that would not have resulted in these hikes. It’s going to be hard to unravel this “emergency ruling” by the Commissioner.

GILDAY: I don’t like what the Commissioner did; he’s bypassed the legislature and enacted it on his own as an “emergency” measure. He started the rulemaking process to put in an actual rule. But insurance companies, not knowing how this will be resolved, have effectively implemented the Commissioner’s ruling out of caution. Credit scores may be reflective of insurance risk. There is no accountability in Olympia because the state has endured one-party rule for so long.

Sen. Muzzall’s “no” vote on SB5542 (1:04:08)

MUZZALL: That is another “scope-of-practice” bill. There are only two states that allow optometrists to train to use laser and other forms of eye surgery. We received lots of public comment on this. Currently, only ophthalmologists can do laser eye surgery; the bill would allow optometrists to do it, too. I didn’t think the bill was ready; the vast majority of ophthalmologists were against the bill. This will probably go forward in the next session. It’s a fairly new practice for optometrists, and the committee didn’t feel comfortable with making the change. Often, a scope-of-practice bill can take several sessions for the details to be resolved.

Rep. Paul: Why can’t ferries go into an “overload” schedule? Load-and-go scheduling could pick up a few extra trips a day. (1:07:55)

PAUL: I don’t know the answer; I’ll look into it.

There was a bill to expand automatic voter registration via the Department of Licensing. Why did Sen. Muzzall vote against it? (1:08:44)

MUZZALL: It’s not necessarily an issue on registering to vote, but the details weren’t there for the bill. We need to make sure that people meet the qualifications to be a registered voter in the state.

As gas prices go up, how can we encourage the use of public transportation? (1:10:39)

GILDAY: One of the final things in the operating budget was a provision to allow kids under 18 to ride for free. But the transit system just does not work for a lot of people. Living on Camano, you cannot depend on transit to get to Coupeville, Stanwood, etc.

MUZZALL: For kids 18 and under, you can ride for free on buses, ferries, etc., but it’s a lifestyle change to take public transit for most people. Taking transit requires a lot of advanced planning for those who live in a rural county.

PAUL: There are good things in the budget that will help with this, but we have no Sunday service, for example. You need to have evening buses — it’s hard to go from the Mount Vernon campus [of Skagit Valley College, where Paul works] to Oak Harbor, for example. Also, there is difficulty in coordinating cross-jurisdiction transit connections. As fuel prices go up, we’ll probably see more ridership.

What can be done about homelessness in Island County? (1:15: 34)

PAUL: All three of us have worked hard on this, but it has a lot of components: mental and behavioral health, housing affordability, etc. Once you lose housing, it’s hard to get back in. Housing stock in Island and Skagit Counties are incredibly low. We’ve committed to improving services for these people to get them back into housing, but there’s no silver bullet… no single solution.

GILDAY: We need to start by looking at underlying causes: drug addiction, mental health, and housing costs. Housing costs are skyrocketing in this state. There are new programs for rental assistance, but we need more homes. We need to encourage builders to build more homes. WE need to build 190,000 more just to get up to the national average, not considering increases in population. When I see bills, I ask about how it will impact the cost of housing; there are so many fees and costs that you can be $100,000 in before you even start construction.

MUZZALL: I’ve been quoted as saying that our homeless situation is a billion-dollar problem. We just spent about a billion dollars in the budget on this, but we haven’t see a lot of success with these programs. Seattle has spent hundreds of millions and it’s only become worse. The core problem is behavioral health and substance abuse problems. Compass Center in Everett and others do wonderful things, and we try to steer funds to them, but the state’s programs aren’t working. Many of these people have such problems that they can’t just be put into housing; they need additional help. I’ve supported continued programs to do that, but we have to have accountability in state government to provide services and hold them accountable — both the people being helped and the state agencies. We have systemic problems of structure and discipline in our state government. An upcoming third-party audit will help us find out if our programs are having the desired effect.

Final Question: What was the most significant area of bipartisan agreement this session? (1:24:43)

GILDAY: Most stuff that happens in Olympia is done on a bipartisan basis. Dave Paul and I don’t agree on a lot of things, but we did vote on a lot of things together. For example, OSPI’s [the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction] birth-to-five program to send books to kids. The state will pick up half of the cost. This helps kids create a library of sixty books before going to kindergarten.

PAUL: There’s a lot of understanding that we need to address housing. We don’t necessarily agree on how to get there, but we do agree on the problem. Also: the pickleball bill. The sport was founded in Washington, and this bill picked up support over the session. Pickleball is now the official sport of Washington State.

MUZZALL: I enjoy having bills or amendments that are supported unanimously. Two of my bills passed unanimously this year: I take pride in this because these bills have real impact on real people. There are a lot of bills that get unanimous support. One was on physicians’ health, and another occupational therapists being able to travel to other states.