Friday February 28 was the “fiscal cutoff”: any bills in the House not approved by the Appropriations committee are dead for the session. Alas, Appropriations never called a hearing or scheduled a vote on either of the bills we were supporting, so they’re both dead. If you came to this page because you clicked on an action to send email, the deadline has passed, so no need.
HB 1671 (the People’s Privacy Act) had a budget of $825,000 / year for 4.7 people in the Attorney General’s Office … the overall budget situation is dire (we’re at risk for running a deficit, and there’s a lot of reluctance to increase taxes on corporations or wealthy Wasingtonians), so this may well have been a barrier. Then again, the budget might just have been an excuse. Right now it’s hard to know.
Oh well. You can’t win them all. We got a late start on this, and with so much going on didn’t have the time to muster broad-based support for either of these bills. The need for both of these bills will continue to increase, so the battle’s far from over. We’ll do a detailed debrief after the session and talk about next steps.
For now,, though, thanks everybody who took action.