Legislative Session Week 14

In this week’s update:

• Staffing Bill Progresses
• School Nurse Supervision Headed for Governor’s Desk
• Outlook for Special Session

WSNA’s 2017 Legislative Priorities and issue-based one-pagers can be found here.

The School Nurse Supervision bill, HB 1346, was delivered to the Governor on Friday, April 14. The Governor has five days (counting Saturday, but not Sunday) to sign the bill – which means the bill signing should happen this week by April 20. WSNA and SNOW have sent a letter to Governor Inslee asking that he sign the bill into law.

The Staffing bill (HB 1714) passed off the Senate floor last Tuesday, April 11, by a vote of 42-7. The bill that passed off the Senate floor included several changes negotiated with stakeholders and the State Department of Health. The new language can be found here. We expect additional action for final passage to take place this week. Stay tuned for full details in next week’s report.

Thank you to everyone who took action by contacting their Senators on the bill last week.

The last day of the regular session is Sunday, April 23. Given that there has been limited progress on budget, the most likely scenario is that the Governor will need to call the legislature back into special session to work on the budget.