This Week’s Highlights
With only nine days until the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn, legislators focused this week on concurrence votes to resolve bill language differences between the House and Senate. It was a week where the pace of activity dropped a bit, in anticipation of the incredible volume of work left to do in the last days of the session.
Budget negotiations. The House and Senate budget teams are meeting daily to negotiate the final budgets. They have signaled that negotiations should be wrapped up by early next week. The final budget will be released via a conference committee report. As such, there are no amendments allowed on the House and Senate floor during debate. It’s a simple up-or-down vote by lawmakers.
Insurance coverage for children’s hearing instruments. WSLHA is advocating that the final budget includes the House budget’s proviso to fund an actuarial study of the coverage of children’s hearing instruments. Without the analysis provided by this proviso, the Legislature will not have sufficient information to consider HB 1047 next session. HB 1047 is the bill that would mandate insurance coverage of hearing instruments for children and adolescents that died this session. We will know whether this proviso is included in the final budget early next week.
Capital gains tax. SB 5096, the bill establishing the capital gains tax, moved out of the House Finance committee Friday morning on a party-line vote. Proceeds from this tax are deposited into the Education Legacy Trust Account to fund K-12 education, early learning, and childcare. The bill also exempts certain assets from the tax including, qualified family-owned small businesses, all residential and other real property, and retirement accounts, and commercial fishing privileges.
The controversy over the emergency clause remains. While no emergency clause was added in committee, the bill was amended to add a section which says the tax "is necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions.” Opponents say this is an alternate way of preventing people from running a referendum, similar to the emergency clause.
Governor’s emergency powers. In a bit of drama on Friday, House Republicans used a procedural motion in an attempt to allow consideration of a bill that would curtail the Governor’s powers during a state of emergency per House Concurrent Resolution 4402. HB 1557 was introduced in mid-March and would limit the Governor’s emergency proclamations to 60 days without subsequent approval by the Legislature. It died earlier in the session. HCR 4402 was introduced on April 14th and would specifically exempt HB 1557 from the cutoff deadlines and allow its consideration. House Republicans ultimately were not successful in bringing HCR 4402 to a vote, thus HB 1557 remains dead.
Bill action by the Governor. Once the House speaker and Senate president sign a bill, it is delivered to the Governor’s office. Some bills are “5-day bills” meaning that they are delivered more than five calendar days before the Legislature adjourns. These bills have five calendar days to be acted on by the Governor. Bills that are delivered fewer than five calendar days before the Legislature adjourns have 20 calendar days to be acted on by the Governor. Sundays are not counted as calendar days.
At that point, the Governor may decide to sign the bill, veto part of it, or veto all of it. If the Governor vetoes part or all of it, the Legislature may vote to override the veto with a two-thirds vote of both houses. This rarely happens. If the governor does not act on a bill after the allotted number of days, it is as if it was signed. You can find bill signing information on the Bill Action section of the Governor’s webpage. All bill signings remain virtual.
Priority Bill Updates
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HB 1196, the bill that creates reimbursement parity for audio-only consultations, is now on its way to the Governor for his action.
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SB 5169, the bill providing reimbursement to health care providers for the cost of PPE when treating patients in person, was signed into law today!
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SB 5229, the legislation that creates a health equity continuing education requirement for health care providers, is now on its way to the Governor for his action.
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SB 5284, the bill eliminating subminimum wage certificates for people with disabilities after July 31, 2023, was signed into law today!
Next Week's Events
With a little over one week remaining in the 2021 session, the House and Senate will largely remain behind closed virtual doors as bill and budget negotiations continue, emerging to vote on concurrence. The negotiated budgets are expected to be made public early next week. The Legislature is scheduled to adjourn on April 25th.
