Today is the fortieth day of the legislative session and is the house of origin policy committee cutoff, the first date on the cutoff calendar for proposed legislation. By the end of today, House bills need to be passed out of policy committees in the House and Senate bills need to be passed out of policy committees in the Senate in order to remain viable for consideration this session. With more than 2,000 bills introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives this year, the cutoff process is a way to winnow down the number of bills that the Legislature will consider through the remainder of session. The next legislative cutoff will be February 24, when bills that impact the budget will need to have passed out of their house of origin fiscal committees.

During recent weeks, WWU and higher education stakeholders have continued to have a strong presence around the capitol. On February 2, WWU Trustees Sharpe, Franklin, Meyer and West, and former WWU Trustee Ralph Munro, joined fellow higher education regents and trustees from around the state for meetings with legislators. In total, more than 30 trustees and regents representing public four-year institutions and community and technical colleges collaborated in Olympia to discuss the Washington Competes agenda and the importance of funding higher education throughout the state.

On February 7, students from Western and other higher education institutions gathered in Olympia to highlight the positive impacts of the State Need Grant and to encourage legislators to fully fund the program. The State Need Grant is a program administered by the Washington Student Achievement Council that provides need-based financial aid to low income students pursuing postsecondary education in Washington State. The State Need Grant provides access to higher education and reduces student debt loads for thousands of students, however, there are currently approximately 24,000 students that qualify for the program but do not receive funding, 10,000 of whom attend public baccalaureate institutions.

The Western Legislative Review will continue to provide updates from Olympia throughout the session, including updates about proposed legislation, proposed budgets, and Western’s 2017 legislative priorities. You can sign up for email updates from the blog on the right side of this page and you can follow WWU Government Relations on Twitter here.

Sara Singleton, WWU’s faculty representative to the Legislature, testifying on SB 5832 before the Senate Higher Education Committee on February 16, 2017