On the eve of the weekend before state lawmakers began legislative deliberations in Olympia, senators and representatives from Washington’s two coastal districts met in Aberdeen to discuss their priorities for the upcoming session.

The shortened 2024 session will kick off Monday, Jan. 8, and continue for 60 days before adjourning in March. That’s slightly more than half the lawmaking time than allotted for long sessions — a typical protocol for even years to allow more time for campaigning.

Six legislators — including the three Republicans from the 19th District (Aberdeen, Willapa Bay and east to Interstate 5) and the three Democrats from the 24th District (Olympic Peninsula) — spoke before an audience at Aberdeen’s Rotary Log Pavilion Friday afternoon for Greater Grays Harbor, Inc.’s yearly legislative send-off event, moderated by GGHI’s outgoing CEO Lynette Buffington.

The state’s coastal lawmakers hold their share of power in the legislature, including Rep. Jim Walsh, of the 19th District, who chairs the state’s Republican party. Walsh listed public safety, tax reform and addressing academic disparities in K-12 schools as his top three priorities for the shortened session.

Walsh’s 19th District partner, Republican Rep. Joel McEntire, also said education will be a priority for him in 2024, though focusing on repairing aging school buildings themselves. McEntire, an assistant ranking member on the House Education Committee, said he wants to continue working on a bill he introduced last year that he said would address the disparity in state school construction funding for rural school districts, creating a more robust grant program for modernizing buildings in districts with less than 1,000 students.

McEntire, who has a degree in evolutionary ecology, added he wants to request the state use new technologies to study the DNA of European green crab to combat the prolific reproductive tendencies of the invasive and destructive creatures.

The third 19th District Republican, Sen. Jeff Wilson, called 2024 the “year of the initiatives,” acknowledging that big issues can be tough to tackle through lawmaking and might instead end up on voters’ ballots. With the extra emphasis on initiatives this year, Wilson said he wants to protect the rights of people to conduct citizen-driven ballot measures. He has already introduced a bill that would mandate a 25-foot buffer zone for signature-gatherers from any potential counter protesters.

24th District Democrats have already introduced Grays Harbor-specific bills. Sen. Kevin Van De Wege, who will forego his legislative seat after this session in a bid for Commissioner of Public Lands, said he is working on bills that would assist the Quinault Indian Nation with permitting a planned fiber cable hub near Ocean Shores, and help Grays Harbor Energy comply with the Climate Commitment Act.

Van De Wege said he will also be working on water quantity and wildfire issues.

Rep. Mike Chapman, who serves as the chair of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, wants to acknowledge the cultural and economic importance of the razor clam, and with the support of McEntire has introduced a bill to make the golden-shelled bivalve the Washington state Clam. He also talked about the importance of bipartisan legislation.

As the coastal lawmaker with perhaps the least emphasis on introducing new bills, Rep. Steve Tharinger, who chairs the House Capital Budget Committee, will focus instead on drafting the house’s spending appropriations for projects. He said money from the state’s capital gains tax will be used to address maintenance and modernizations in smaller school districts, and to expand centers to train students in the trades. He also mentioned investments in housing and behavioral health.

Economic priorities

Buffington prompted lawmakers on several 2024 legislative priorities for GGHI, including incentivizing development, especially for housing, reducing operational business costs, and consolidating permit timelines for state agencies.

Walsh used the opportunity to talk about tax reform, saying that in order to encourage businesses “we need to flatten our taxes, so that everyone pays the same percentage. This applies across the board,” between sales tax, property tax and business tax.

Chapman countered by saying the legislature has lowered business and operation tax for small businesses in recent years and talked about past bipartisan bills that suggested tax breaks for paper and pulp mills and agricultural producers.

The legislators also discussed ideas to address the state’s housing crisis, which GGHI identified as a priority. Tharinger said the state a few years ago started a program that, instead of providing funding for housing units, funded the development of the infrastructure needed to build them — something rural communities often lack. He said he’s pushed the Department of Commerce to play a bigger financial role in rural communities.

Wilson said funding the Legislature secured for the North Shore Levee Project — for which Buffington thanked the lawmakers to a round of applause — should help improve the value of existing housing stock on the Harbor, and allow more people to live in buildings that already exist. Walsh added that the levee will lower insurance costs, but that the “broken” housing system can’t be fixed by state programs alone.

Other bills

Aberdeen City Administrator Ruth Clemens prompted legislators about funding for homeless shelters in Grays Harbor. Tharinger replied that there is no “bucket” for homeless shelter funding, but that he was encouraged by the city’s recent effort on the issue.

While it wasn’t discussed Friday, homelessness could be addressed by Walsh this session. In a recent news release, he said he wants to create a system for auditing the spending of homeless housing funding, citing concerns that too much is being absorbed in the bureaucratic process. In an interview with KXRO, Walsh said he wants to change a state administrative code that prioritizes funding for “housing-first” homeless shelters to put them on the same playing field for state resources as “sober living” shelters.

Walsh also plans to introduce a bill to “balance officer protection with legal recourse” for law enforcement officers. It would strike down a law from last year’s session that provided greater leeway for lawsuits against cops.

In addition to a bill that would allocate funding for the state to study prevention and suppression techniques for electric vehicle fires, Wilson in a news release said he will introduce legislation improving the state’s tools for culling sea lion populations in salmon rivers in an effort to restore fish populations.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.