Legislative Update

Since covering pension/retirement/health insurance issues on behalf of WASA and AWSP, there are a few important points we have learned. This is just a brief summary of selected retirement related topics. However, the importance of advance planning cannot be overstated. These are not issues to put off until the last month of either one’s impending retirement or approaching Medicare eligible age. It’s best to complete your retirement application 30–90 days before you plan to retire.

“I don’t get political” ~ Betty White. We all can’t be Ms. White because the Washington State Legislature is in session and working hard at proposing and moving legislature of import and educators need to be involved.

The second week of this nine-week legislative session ends today. Things are moving fast. The education committees in both the House and the Senate continued to hear bills and take executive action this week. The first major deadline of this year is February 3rd. That’s when policy bills must pass out of their original committees. The first deadline for fiscal committees to pass their bills out of committee is February 7th.

There was a big hearing the morning of January 18th in the House Education Committee on HB 1226 and HJR (House Joint Resolution) 4200 for passing bonds with simple majority.Both the bill and resolutionneed to pass for the issue to go to the ballot for the general election in November, but there is momentum once again around the need for school construction bonds to pass with a simple majority so students can have safe and healthy schools.

The saying that short legislative sessions are like sprints and long legislative sessions are like running marathons is completely true! This week, the 2022 legislative session got off to a rapid start. With about 1,500 bills either recently introduced or leftover from last year and more on the way, bill hearings began right away on Monday and both the House and Senate began voting bills out of their respective chambers on Wednesday.