Oregon Public Broadcasting

Washington lawmakers are heading home after adjourning this weekend. But their counterparts in Salem are moving quickly to narrow their agenda.  

Tuesday is the deadline for bills to gain initial committee approval. That means the clock is ticking for lawmakers and lobbyists.  Salem correspondent Chris Lehman has more.

House Agriculture Committee Chair Brian Clem has a lot of bills on his plate.  Partway through one meeting, he sorts through a mountain of paperwork to figure out what’s next.

Brian Clem:  “Carryover 3089 and 2223.  Carryover 2228 and 3298.”

Like many other committee chairs, Clem has scheduled extra meetings to make sure he can work through as many bills as possible.  He says the pace quickened a few weeks ago when people realized the deadline to pass out a bill out of committee was rapidly approaching:Rep. Brian Clem:  “Everybody and their mother showed up right then and said ‘Hey, can you get me a hearing?’.  And in several cases I said no, even things I’m a sponsor of.”

Of course, no bill is truly dead until the final gavel falls.  But these internal deadlines do serve as a handy way of deep-sixing unpopular bills.

Lawmakers still have two months to work out all the kinks on the bills that do make it past this early cut-off.

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