2-SSB 5459
The 2011 legislative session is officially over, but the Governor has not signed the budget, nor all of the legislation. 2-SSB 5459 passed. It does much more damage than it's closure of Frances Haddon Morgan Center and the freezing of admissions at Yakima Valley School (Both residential habilitation centers (RHCs) and "institutions" by Federal standards) See my next post for a breakdown..
In large part, passage resulted from misinformation that was sold to legislislators as truth, but also in part because of what I consider to be gaming on the part of it's prime sponsor, Senator Adam Kline. From the point of view of slimey politics, his move was brilliant, but from the point of view of democracy by the people for the people, it was just slimey politics.
Originally, when the bill was introduced during the first part of the session, there was a huge onslaught of fact-based objection to it. The response of the sponsors was to remove most of the most objectionable parts and then return it to be passed onto the next committee, where it sat through the entire session+far into the extended session with no further hearing. Within the last few days of the extended session, it was resurrected. With only 20 minutes notice, a public hearing was called & language, similar to the original language, was passed as amendment. A visit to TVW archives will show you that committee members had little more notice of the amendments than the public, but with inaccurate portrayal by the sponsorship and staff, it was passed out of the Senate to the House where it was amended slightly, but due to continued misrepresentation, it again was passed. The amendment caused it to be returned to the Senate where it was again passed. If this is democracy, what is trickery?
Even if this bill had been one I could support, I would still be mightily upset at the manner in which democracy was abused by this Senator and his supporting cast. I hope his constituents will remember his brand of politics when next at the voting booth. Perhaps by then, they will have found someone more democratically inclined.
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