Author Archives: Laudan

Listening to You – Town Hall Follow-up

Greetings from Olympia,

The 2020 legislative session is scheduled to conclude March 12. Things are really picking up. We are now looking at legislation that the House has approved. Those bills will have to go through the committee process here in the Senate and then taken up on the floor. The process is really designed so that not a lot of legislation makes it to the governor’s desk, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your particular interest.

We’ve covered a lot of subjects from open government issues, to elections, to health care and gun rights. During all this, the budget is being worked on. We had some great news last week that should hopefully tamp down efforts to raise additional taxes. The revenue forecast projects the state will take in $1.4 billion more than we expected since adopting the budget last year!

I’m baffled at the way budgets are done in Olympia. There was simply no reason for the majority to ram through a billion-dollar tax bill on small business, including doctors, mental health providers and nursing homes.

Health care challenges

We have a big challenge in our state and country concerning rising health care costs and a lot of things we are doing in Olympia aren’t helping. I did vote for legislation that caps the out of pocket costs of insulin at $100 for a 30 day supply. We heard very compelling testimony in the Health Care Committee about the impacts that skyrocketing costs for this lifesaving drug are having and we needed to act. I did not support another somewhat related bill that would have created another government agency to “fix” our state’s problems. We need an honest accounting of what’s driving costs as opposed to rushing bills to put out fires.

You can watch an interview I did recently with the chair of the health care committee by clicking here. It’s a complex problem that we have a lot of bipartisan agreement on, the challenge is how we get there and are we actually just making the problem worse.

It’s all about balance

I was honest with you when I stepped up to represent you in the Senate that my job was to listen. I’m not an expert on every policy that comes before me, but I make every effort to learn, understand and vote my constituents and my conscience. The state absolutely needs to help those that can’t help themselves, but we also need to be pragmatic in our approaches. That’s something innate to me as farmer.

You may have heard about efforts to restore voting rights for felons. The debate in the Senate got fairly contentious. I did not support that legislation because I did not think it was fair. Let me be clear, if you’ve served your debt to society, I’m in favor of restoring of voting rights. But the bill we were considering allowed folks who had not completed all the terms of their sentences to have those restored – people out on parole or now called community custody or who haven’t made restitution. I’m tired of the slippery slope and we need to send a message about fairness for victims. Pay the full debt to society and rejoin the community – no sooner.

Another example of balancing the rights and privileges that government gets involved with concerns housing and property rights. It’s no secret that finding affordable housing is a challenge. Rents are growing often faster than incomes and sometimes people are facing evictions. The state does provide resources for people in that situation, but we took up legislation that tried to fix legal issues or imbalances that might exist that could lead to evictions and increased homelessness.

The challenge here is the need for people to be housed and the rights of property owners who provide rental housing. For big property companies, some of these rules and regulations aren’t that big a deal. I’m concerned about the impacts these laws have on small operations, people that have a few units they’re renting. People don’t often consider that a big reason why housing has become so unaffordable are the layers of costly rules government places on housing providers. This doesn’t even take into consideration the sheer lack of supply that drives up costs for everyone.

Town hall follow up

Thanks to everyone who took part in our two 10th District town halls this past weekend. The meetings were very well attended, and my House seatmates and I covered a lot of ground on issues ranging from government transparency, education, and homelessness, to Second Amendment rights and more. Listening is one of the most important things I can do when working to represent our district, so these meetings were particularly valuable.

As we near the end of the 2020 legislative session, don’t hesitate to reach out with your thoughts on legislation. I take your comments to heart and will do my best to represent your views.

It is an honor to serve you. Please reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have about your state government.

Sincerely,

Ron Muzzall,

Your 10th District State Senator

Update from Olympia – Halfway There

Greetings from Olympia,

The 60-day legislative session is just over halfway finished. As a member of the Senate budget committee (Ways and Means), we worked late into the evening getting public input on bills that will have financial implications. The full Senate has begun working on approving (or voting against) legislation that started here in the Senate. Our deadline is Feb. 19. After that point, we’ll be looking at bills coming over from the House and giving them an honest assessment.

I am amazed at the number of bills that we have taken up. It is a never-ending stream of policies, from dictating what kinds of drinks can be on a kid’s menu in a restaurant to giving 17-year-olds the ability to vote.

Usually, the bills that make it all the way through the process get signed by the governor after the legislative session. However, there was one bill that was so important the governor signed it just the other day. To no one’s surprise, it was a $1 billion tax bill. Senate Bill 6492 was a “fix” to legislation approved last year that was so convoluted the state Department of Revenue was not sure it could collect the taxes. So, the majority got a do-over. Unfortunately, some of the same bad policies in the original bill remained.

I serve our district on the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee. When we were holding public hearings on legislation, one thing was clear. We have a bit of a challenge on our hands keeping costs down, recruiting and retaining health-care providers and ensuring access across our state.

The tax “reform” bill, as they called it, does nothing to help the situation. In fact, it includes steep tax increases on nursing homes and health-care providers. Our state is legitimately facing a crisis when it comes to nursing-home closures because our state’s Medicaid reimbursement rates aren’t keeping up. Believe it or not, we are doing a worse job than Idaho and Oregon. Instead of having a frank conversation about where we are investing the extra $1 billion you sent Olympia to help keep nursing homes open, the majority has decided to tax them more.

The value of listening

When the session started, I authored an op-ed that appeared in the La Conner Weekly. It was titled “the value of listening.” Things like I discussed above are indicative of the problems we face here in Olympia. Please take a moment to read that by clicking here. Every day I see examples where we can do better for you by actually listening.

Here’s another good example. There has been a lot of discussion in transportation circles in your state Capitol about implementing what’s called a low carbon fuel standard. Sounds like a great idea to address climate change, but in practice it’s bad for our district and other rural parts of the state. It would add 57 cents to every gallon of gas and none of it would go back to improving roads. They tried this in California and the results have been clear. It is an expensive, regressive way to lower carbon emissions and one of the least effective.

Proponents are relegating fixing carbon onto the backs of the poor. Is that fair?

The first bill of my legislative career

Our district is heavily reliant on agriculture. We produce dozens of products that feed our state and the world. However, farms across the country and at home are facing challenges recruiting the next generation of farmers.

Under legislation I introduced that was approved unanimously just the other day by the state Senate, a pilot program would be revived to expose young workers to the agricultural industry through farm internships… read more.

Town Hall Weekend

We’ll have a bit of a break in the action down here in Olympia, and my seatmates and I will be hosting town halls in district. I encourage you to attend. See below for more information.

Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020

Mount Vernon WSU Extension Center

16650 WA-536, Mt Vernon, WA 98273

10:00 – 11 a.m.

Oak Harbor High School Student Union Building

1 Wildcat Way, Oak Harbor, WA 98277

1:30– 2:30 p.m.

Working with me in Olympia

You may have seen a Facebook post I did recently about some of the young men and women who work with me in Olympia. Jerry Coleman, Hailey Sarber and Rozzy Ware traveled from their homes in Stanwood and Mount Vernon to spend a week paging for the Washington State Senate at the Capitol in Olympia. They were three of the 20 students who served as Senate pages for the third week of the 2020 legislative session.

It was awesome having the opportunity to sponsor a group of friends. I hope this experience they had together is something they’ll remember fondly. It seemed that they all had a great time and learned a lot about the legislative process.

It is an honor to serve you. Please reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have about your state government.

Sincerely,

Ron Muzzall,

Your 10th District State Senator

Update from Olympia

Greetings from Olympia,

The value of listening

Proponents are relegating fixing carbon onto the backs of the poor. Is that fair?

The first bill of my legislative career

Town Hall Weekend

We’ll have a bit of a break in the action down here in Olympia, and my seatmates and I will be hosting town halls in district. I encourage you to attend. See below for more information.

Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020

Mount Vernon WSU Extension Center

16650 WA-536, Mt Vernon, WA 98273

10:00 – 11 a.m.

Oak Harbor High School Student Union Building

1 Wildcat Way, Oak Harbor, WA 98277

1:30– 2:30 p.m.

Working with me in Olympia

It is an honor to serve you. Please reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have about your state government.

Sincerely,

Ron Muzzall,

Your 10th District State Senator

Muzzall legislation would reestablish farm internship program

Farms across the country are facing challenges recruiting the next generation of farmers. Under legislation introduced by state Sen. Ron Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor and approved today by the state Senate, the state would revive a pilot program to expose young workers to the agricultural industry through farm internships.

“Young folks don’t always know the options they may have to learn a trade or find a career path,” said Muzzall. “My legislation will open up opportunities for young workers to explore a career in agriculture and, also importantly, support small farms in our state.”

Senate Bill 6421 would direct the state Department of Labor and Industries to reestablish a pilot project that began in 2010 and involved 20 of Washington’s 39 counties when it expired at the end of 2019. The project, which is primarily geared toward supporting small farms, would remove regulatory barriers to employ interns who will receive training and other benefits such as housing while they may be starting their own farming operations.

“This program has had a great deal of success and given the current state of farming, one that is desperately need,” Muzzall said.

“This farm internship program is a unique, innovative, educational opportunity for interns to receive training on small farms. Extending this program will preserve a safe, educational option for interested interns and farmers,” said Scott Dilley, Communications Director for the Washington State Dairy Federation. “We are thankful to Sen. Muzzall for his sponsorship of this bill and for the vote by senators today to move the bill forward.”

This was Muzzall’s first bill to be approved since recently joining the Senate and was approved unanimously. It now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Three friends serve as pages

Jerry Coleman, Hailey Sarber, and Rozzy Ware traveled from their homes in Stanwood and Mount Vernon to spend a week paging for the Washington State Senate at the Capitol in Olympia. They were three of the 20 students who served as Senate pages for the third week of the 2020 legislative session.

Rozzy, 15, is the daughter of Kathy and Adam Ware and enjoys husbandry. “It’s a fun way to get involved,” she said. “The whole experience was really fun.”

The homeschooled tenth graders were sponsored by the 10th Legislative District Sen. Ron Muzzall, who serves Island County and parts of Skagit and Snohomish counties.

“It was awesome having the opportunity to sponsor a group of friends,” Muzzall said. “I hope this experience they had together is something they’ll remember fondly. It seemed that they all had a great time and learned a lot about the legislative process.”

Jerry, the son of Sarah and James Coleman, is 16 years old and enjoys riding the unicycle. “I loved every moment. Getting to know everyone on campus was really fun,” he said.

Hailey, 15, enjoys horseback riding and is the daughter of Craig and Linette Sarber. She explained, “I liked being on the floor. I was able to pick up on how the Senate operates.”

The Senate page program provides an opportunity for Washington students to spend a week working at the Legislature. Students transport documents between offices, as well as deliver messages and mail. Pages spend time in the Senate chamber and attend page school to learn about parliamentary procedure and the legislative process. Students also draft their own bills and engage in a mock session.

Students interested in the Senate Page Program are encouraged to visit: https://leg.wa.gov/Senate/Administration/PageProgram/

Update from Olympia

Greetings from Olympia,

We’re in the third week of the legislative session and the committees are working quickly to get public comment on legislation and voted out before the Feb. 7 deadline for policy committees. Things feel a bit frantic as the majority party doesn’t appear to have clear direction on what we need to be working on.

During my town halls, I was clear with you all about what I felt we needed to do in the session, and how we need to address the homelessness problem. To me, we must have a laser-like focus on mental health and drug addiction. In my meetings here in Olympia with folks working on this problem, they agree.

The problem won’t be solved by just throwing more money at building taxpayer-subsidized housing that takes years to come online. That’s the plan that the governor is proposing. He wants to raid the state’s rainy-day fund to the tune of $300 million. It’s an emergency fund in case of an economic downturn, not a piggy bank for ongoing expenses on something we should have been addressing with the record amount of tax dollars we already have.

We (the state government) spent about $625 million in the biennial budget on homelessness. I don’t feel like you are getting the results you deserve as taxpayers, and our neighbors stuck on the streets caught in drug addiction or struggling with mental illness aren’t getting the help they deserve, either. That’s a problem.

Some of my Senate Republican colleagues held a news conference recently to unveil a comprehensive plan to get at the root causes of homelessness, respond to immediate needs, and address larger systemic problems. You can watch that by clicking here. When reporters asked the Senator majority leader what they are doing, his response was shockingly, “We don’t have a final plan yet.”

Other unfinished business

An issue that is constantly being kicked around in Olympia is our state’s lax drunk-driving laws. For some unknown reason, bills to crack down on impaired driving are consistently blocked. As a former fireman of 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand the tragic outcomes of people getting behind the wheel while impaired. Too many lives are lost on our roadways that are preventable, particularly for repeat offenders.

My legislation, Senate Bill 6555, is a simple proposal to stiffen penalties for those who continue to put others on the road at risk. It would reduce the number of prior offenses necessary to elevate a driving-under-the-influence offense to a felony from three to two priors. It would also increase the window in which the two offenses must have been committed to amount to a felony from 10 years to 25 years.

It is an honor to serve you. Please reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have about your state government.

Sincerely,

Ron Muzzall,

Your 10th District State Senator

The 2020 Legislative Session Begins

January 20, 2020

Greetings from Olympia,

Happy New Year! The 2020 legislative session is underway, and it was a fast and eventful first week. After I was sworn in during the opening-day ceremonies, the Legislature got right to work, holding committee hearings and even voting on bills that were still alive from last year.

As a reminder, I will be serving on three committees this session. I am the ranking member on the Senate State Government, Tribal Relations and Elections committee, and I’m a member of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee and the Health and Long Term Care Committee. This past week, I was also elected by my colleagues to a leadership position within the Senate Republican Caucus. Read more about that by clicking here.

My job this short session is to listen and learn. My goal is to listen to the needs of constituents while considering what is being introduced in Olympia and learning from my colleagues about how to effectively navigate the legislative process for my constituents.

I care deeply about problems of homelessness, mental health and drug abuse impacting communities throughout the district. It’s a statewide issue with a lot of bipartisan agreement, so what will be important is to ensure the resources make it to where they need to go and actually address the problems.

I’ve introduced legislation, Senate Bill 6421, which focuses on agricultural education. It would re-establish a program for farm internships. As a fourth-generation farmer, I care about the future of family farms that make up much of our district. I think that young people can learn a great deal about themselves and this critical part of our state’s economy by working in it.

As a freshmen senator in the minority, I’m not under the impression that I’m going to have some huge impact. But I want you and my other constituents to know that I’m intent on listening to your needs and fighting for you. My goals are to not step on too many toes, work to elevate the discourse in our legislative process and ensure our district has a strong voice in the decisions being made in the Senate.

My door is always open. We may not agree on everything, and as I said in my town halls, I’m probably going to make everyone angry at me at some point. But I’m going to always be honest, and I will always listen to you and take my constituents’ insights to heart when making decisions in the Legislature.

It is an honor to serve you. Please reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have about your state government.

Sincerely,

Signature Final

Ron Muzzall,

Your 10th District State Senator

Sen. Muzzall unanimously elected deputy whip

On the third day of the 2020 legislative session, Sen. Ron Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor, was elected to a leadership position by his Senate Republican colleagues. Muzzall will serve as the deputy whip for the caucus.

“The selection for this position came as a surprise to me,” said Muzzall. “The caucus apparently has enough confidence in me to have voted unanimously and I’m proud of that vote of faith. I will do my best to fulfill the responsibilities of this role and their expectations.”

The deputy whip is responsible for assisting the whip in monitoring attendance of the senators during floor sessions and caucuses. In addition to aiding leadership in communicating procedural votes to other members, the deputy whip acts as the whip in the event of their absence.

“My ability to effectively represent my constituents has been strengthened by my position as the assistant ranking member on the State Government, Tribal Relations and Elections Committee and now as deputy whip. I’m looking forward to the next 57 days and working hard for the people of the 10th District.”

Muzzall formally sworn in on first day of 2020 session

Appointed late last year to serve the 10th Legislative District after the retirement of Sen. Barbara Bailey, state Sen. Ron Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor, was sworn in Monday during the opening ceremonies of the 2020 legislative session.

Muzzall, who is a small-business owner and farmer, has hit the ground running, holding a series of town hall events to hear from constituents about their concerns with state government.

“When I met with constituents around the district in December, I shared my approach for this session,” said Muzzall. “As a freshman senator, I’m not under the impression that I will have some dramatic effect down here, but that I will fight for their values, be honest with them, and listen intently to the will of the voters.

“A common theme that I’m hearing is that people feel left out of the process. They feel that they aren’t being listened to and the government doesn’t respect their wishes. That is something that I can change. We’ve got a great example with the recent vote on lower car tabs that is now tied up in the courts.

“People rightly expect results and feel that they are not getting them. In this short session, I will be working hard to seriously address the mental health and drug crisis affecting communities across my district and the state and ensuring that people feel that their state government is working for them.”