Research Mom has been reviewing key legislation for over seven years. I am forwarding you an email from her with a list of bills we need to be aware of. Please review and contact your representatives accordingly. We must be ever diligent in our efforts.
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Below is a list of bills that need special attention as of the 4th day of session. Whether you are at home, in your office, or able to come down to Olympia, please notify your district legislators on how you want them to vote. You can simply call the Hotline 1-800-562-6000 or send an email. In addition to notifying your own legislators (2 Representatives and 1 Senator) you can notify the committee chairman and the entire committee members.
For updates on bills please go to ResearchMom.homestead.com legislative page. Links to legislators can also be found at “tools” or ASK RESEARCH MOM for a excel data sheet that you can use to sort for committee members contact info, tel number, email addresses, and more.
If you are unsure of what you can do, sign up for one of the workshops listed at the end of this email. Contact edresearch -at- hotmail.com (change "-at-" to "@") for info.
BILL WATCH LIST
All bills numbers are linked to bill summary webpage
Check for new bills on ResearchMom.homestead.com
SCHOOLS:
ELECTIONS:
LAND/PROPERTY
TRANSPORTATION:
SUMMARY OF BILLS
Two years ago an education bill was introduced that would force the State to be in charge of teaching emotions, values, and relationships including a system of curriculum, standards, and assessments. The bill was not based on requests from parents, teachers, or schools, but the proponents did stand to gain financially if the bill passed. Today, the bill will mandate the teaching of “Social emotional learning” as part of the definition of basic education to create the “global citizen”. Although it requests no money, there are non-profit NGO’s, (Non-governmental organizations) prepared to pour in the dollars needed to program your child to a government set of emotions and values. Experience shows that programs in schools that teach relationships, tolerance, and peace have gone against the cultural values of families and creates a secular one-size-fits-all standard of “feeling”. Reviewing the information of the original bill HB 1162 will help you formulate your thoughts - click on bill reports at the bottom of the Bill Summary page.
Currently Pierce County is the only county that has polling places. There are bureaucrats that want to force Pierce County to an all mail ballot process. These two bills effectively shut down poll voting by removing all language regulating the system of poll voting, specifically the word “poll”.
Not only will this backdoor method shut down the will of a county, but it creates a permanent method to never allow citizens to vote in person at a poll. The concept of provisional ballots is based upon a valid voter’s name not being in a listing at a “polling place” but still is registered under state law as qualified to vote. The new language may indicate that a “voter” has rights even if that person is not listed in the “voter registration database”. Clarity is needed to insure that more rights are not given to persons that have not legally followed rules to be listed in the updated version of the Statewide voter registration database.
This short bill changes the way decisions are made at Growth Management hearings to empower the “board” to over-ride the rights of a local government. Many policies set by the Growth Management board, state agencies, and other governing boards have been created by a top down approach to follow a national/global one-size-fits-all system without any regard to the dynamics of a community. For example forcing a town with many hills and icy weather to spend taxpayer’s money to create bike paths thereby causing vehicle congestion, removing parking, and taking away land from nearby property owners to justify a state campaign for bike paths may not fit the needs of that community. This bill could take away their rights to not comply.
The Western Climate Initiative signed by Gov Gregoire has been the basis for Washington State’s commitment to “build a green community” and reduce “greenhouse gas emissions”. To accomplish this goal Washington must have a “cap and trade” program, force citizens to reduce driving (Exec. Order 07-02), control energy and water use, increase mass transportation plans (despite low ridership), and many more. Find more information on the Western Climate Initative at:
Read about Washington State’s plans to implement WCI.
The complete street concept was created by bicycle groups who want to remove motorized vehicles from the roads. In the name of being fair to pedestrians, bicycles, and other users, roads are being changed to a non-motorized vehicle agenda. The state will be following the one-size-fits-all guidelines of a national/global agenda and pressure local communities to comply by dangling the carrot called “money”. In times of critical budget crisis we should not be considering such measures. The bill also carries an added pressure of requesting all local communities to follow a national/global plan when they plan their cities. It states that “all urban main streets should be designed to provide safe access to all users” but it favors walkers, bicycle riders, and not vehicles. They define “Sound engineering principles” as following the guidelines developed by an engineering NGO (Institute of Transportation Engineers) titled “Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities”. The document details how all cities will look like and the goal is an out-come based approach to cookie cutter cities.
Learn more about Complete Streets from completestreets.org
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