An legislative update

Right now it is sitting in Ways and Means waiting to be referred to Ways and Means sub committee on Human Service.

Within next three weeks, Senate President, House Speaker, Sen. Richard Devlin (co-chair, Ways and Means) and Rep. Peter Buckley (co-chair, Ways and Means) will meet to prioritize over 250 bills and refer them to different sub committees.

The bill could either be referred or not. If it happened not to be referred then the bill will die.

We met with Sen. Delvin and Rep. Buckley together last Thursday for 15 minutes and gave our last sale pitch.

Right now, we will wait and finger crossing hoping that it will be assigned to sub committee of human service.

When it does then we will need to start advocate all over again and attend to the hearing and testify, etc.

If it do receive a “do pass” recommendation, it will leave the sub committee to full Ways and Means committee for vote.

If it do get “do pass” recommendation by full Ways and Means, it will go to full Senator for vote. Once, the bill will become a working session bill and we will need to discontinue our lobbying work. However, the general public are encouraged to contact their legislature directly pushing them to vote “yes”.

If it do get vote from full Senate, it will go back to Ways and Means for final check then head out to full House for vote.

If the House do vote and pass, it will head to our governor Kate Brown for signature.

The legislative is expected to wrap up their legislative by June 26th however it can be extended until July 15th.

Basically, we have until June 26th to get this bill passed so the month of June will definitely be a BUSY month for everyone!

Right now, it is in our gut feeling that it will be assigned to subcommittee of human service of Ways and Means. Steven, Mark and I met with 4 out of 6 people who serve on this committee. We also met with 17 out of 20 legislature who serve on full ways and means committee. The impression we have, so far, seem to be optimistic however we were told repeatedly not to get our hope up.

Thanks