It's hard to avoid the comparisons between legislators and sports teams. After all, both are paid a lot of money, by people with a lot more money, to toil in elaborate, publicly funded facilities, playing games that turn out about the same year after year. Both are heavily male pursuits involving enormous egos and occasional prosecutions for sexual predations, for which they are invariably not punished very much. The only real differences are that the sports teams get a lot more scrutiny, with obsessed fans memorizing arcane trivia, snapping up commemorative merchandise, and spending endless hours watching beer and SUV commercials interrupted now and then by play. With the legislation, lives are in the balance.

And then there are the minor leagues, where the compensation is lousy, the bus rides are tedious, the fans are few, but the game remains the same and the combatants are all hoping that their star performances will lead to a shot at the big time. For politicos, the minors are the state chambers in Olympia.

So, ETS! returns to our time-honored tradition of covering the local minor league teams. By treating them as sports figures, we hope that more people will take the time to memorize the statistics, get on the phone and root for your favorites, and in general PAY ATTENTION. You never know when someone will ask you, in the lunch room at work, "How 'bout that SB 5745!"

The Season So Far

Setting aside the concept (for now) that all legislation is inherently bad because, well, who the fuck needs all these laws, ETS! has listed key bills playing on each team this year. This is, like much of sports, entirely arbitrary; some 2,197 bills were introduced this legislative session, which raises the serious question of why the season is so damned short and how legislators can possibly give serious consideration to all the bills in front of them. They can't, which is why so many bad bills become bad law.

Last week, a key deadline passed in the state House and Senate on March 2 and 3. By those dates, original or modified bills had to be passed out of their original committees. If not, they are considered dead--but they can always be attached later as amendments to surviving bills, so the standings (and the value of the bill in question) can change rapidly.

With all this in mind, we'll summarize here the fates so far this season of the teams in our league. With the playoffs (budget deliberations, the actual funding of these bills, and their passage into law with or without the signature of Gov. Gary Locke) just around the corner, they're making their stretch runs!

In general, there are a lot more winning teams this year than in the past two, when Republicans worked hard to ensure that the whole league was mired in losing streaks. This shouldn't be construed to mean that a lot of good legislation is being introduced; instead, it's all rather tepid, with the emphasis being on ordinary legislation that was blocked in past years by fanatic right wingers or inexplicible obsessions with stadiums.

Aging/Long Term Care: HB 1546/SB 5834, the Home Care Stabilization Act, would improve care provided to elderly and the disabled. Its cost may doom it this session.

Agriculture:HJM 4005 calls on Congress and the President to not use agricultural products as part of trade sanctions; it's a transparent bid by the state's wheat growers (among others) to protest the ban on sales that followed Pakistan's testing of nuclear weapons last year. Goddess forbid that nuclear disarmament should interfere with business.

Bozos With Guns: Amazingly, an anti-gun bill is still alive. Whitney Graves (HB 1424/SB 5294), which would hold gun owners liable if a child gets possession of a loaded, unlocked firearm, has passed through its committees. Despite the treacly practice of naming laws after dead kids, this is a good bill. Just so you don't think the gun zealots have disappeared, HB 1196 would require the state to recognize other states' concealed pistol licenses. Just what we fucking need, more guns.

Child Care/Early Childhood: HB 1994 would increase state reimbursement rates for child care. SB 5014/HB 1922 would provide tax incentives for employer-sponsored child care. On the down side, HB 1935 would raise income eligibility for the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program.

Child Welfare: HB 1275/SB 5163 would ease the horrid impact of WorkFirst (Gary Locke's "welfare reform" scam) on infants so that mothers aren't forced back into the workplace when the baby is three months old. Similarly, HB 1571 would provide child care payments to individuals complying with WorkFirst. The Senate version, SB 5069, would provide child care benefits while the moms are enrolled in community college. (Why don't they think of these things first)? SB 5390 expands the health care access available to at-risk moms and kids under three. There are a whole bunch of indifferent bills attempting to tweak the state's awful foster parent program; an example is HB 1518, which would continue payments to foster parents under investigation.

Civil Rights: Among the good bills are the (probably doomed) Safe Schools bill, which would offer redress for numerous classes of students, including gays and lesbians, who suffer from violence in the schools. Despite over 65 sponsors, this one seems likely to not pass. A key set of bills, SB 5130 and 5337, extends worker protections against employer discrimination to businesses with fewer than eight employees, which are not currently covered by civil rights law. SB 6020 would require the collection of Social Security numbers with drivers license applications, mandated by the Feds in their ongoing drive to have one national ID system to track us all.

Crime: Steady improvement by a team that had hundreds of losses last year. On the losing side, there's the wretched Gang and Abatement of Homes Law (SB 5158, HB 1655) (ETS!, Feb. 17 99). The 37th District's Sen. Adam Kline co-sponsored this assault on civil liberties, and though he now says he'll vote against it and only wanted to amend it to make it better, that's no excuse. Overall, there's less tough-on crime nonsense this year; exceptions are HB 1710 and HB 1849, which increase penalties for certain crimes against children. SSB 5234 would define a new crime, "Custodial Sexual Misconduct," to cover all sexual intercourse involving residents of state, county, or city mental health care facilities; remarkably, consent of the victim would not be allowed as a defense. Only one win this season: HB 1160 would make it easier for police to enforce restraining orders granted in other states.

Disability: HB 1372/SB 5240 would repeal the requirement to maintain a registry for handicapped children. Why does the state keep such a list? The House Capital Budget committee is considering creating a $5 million fund for housing people with developmental disabilities--slightly less than the $8 mil Locke wants for farmworker housing for many, many more people. Interesting priorities.

Health: SB 5512/HB 1590 eliminates sex discrimination in health care plans in the area of contraceptive services; currently women pay, on average, far more in out-of-pocket health care expenses than men because private insurance doesn't cover such things. HB 1888/SB 5587 is the famed Patients Bill of Rights, a modest and long overdue attempt to rein in health plans in Washington state. HB 2032 is another, less comprehensive version; support the former. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) bill, HB 1301/SB 5416, would attempt to fund health care for all children. It's in serious trouble in the House. This is the makeup for last year, when Washington's Repub legislators made us one of only two states (along with Wyoming) that failed to take advantage of a federal pool of funds for this program. On the down side, HB 2160 would set conditions for individual health insurance coverage, and make it harder to get coverage for pre- existing conditions or result in higher premiums. SSB 5359 would require tobacco settlement money be reserved for the health services account or tobacco cessation only. Currently tobacco is one of the only pools of funds left for discretionary spending after the various spending caps on other monies--it's been proposed as a source for CHIP, Children's Medicaids program, and to fill gaps in the state's Basic Health Plan. HB 1366/SB 5313 would restrict audits by insurance companies for mental health.

Housing/Homelessness: One of the young players, HB 2155, would have allowed Seattle to consider rent control. It died in committee, but the enthusiastic fan support suggests it'll be back next year. HB 1345/SB 5532 would grant property tax exemptions for low income housing. HB 1283/SB 5247 would create a pool of funds to increase investment in affordable housing for low-income seniors, in part through B&O taxes. Legislators are also considering Locke's $8 million package to address substandard farmworker housing--at the same time the INS is arranging to have many of those workers fired. HB 1378/SB 5372 would regulate mobile home landlord-tenant relations. SB 5450 revises shelter care law to prioritize placing children with relatives. SB 5780 would prohibit landlord discrimination against tenants based on source of income (e.g., Section 8 Housing vouchers). There are also requests for $6 million to provide shelter for victims of domestic violence, and $2.7 mil for kids at risk of being placed in foster care. Both are related to welfare reform, since 60% of welfare applicants have experienced or are fleeing from domestic violence, and parents who can't house their kids are at risk of losing them to the foster care system.

Hunger: HB 1892/SB 5854 would restore funding to commodity food programs and state hunger studies. Anti-hunger activists also want $2 million to increase Meals For Kids (free and reduced-price school breakfasts).

Killing Animals: A new team this year, with mixed success. HB 1057 would makelayo it illegal to set leghold traps for coyotes and other animals, and a crime to set any trap on someone's property without permission. HB 1012/SB 5120, on the other hand, would undo I-655, passed in 1996, which criminalized bear baiting and hunting large animals with hound dogs. How to make this team a winner: ban all hunting. Period.

Miscellaneous: SB 5268, a proposal originating with Mayor Schell, would create another layer of government, a special parks district, to oversee parks, and put the mayor and city council in key positions to oversee the city's zoos and parks, politicizing the department.

Save the Trees: The key environmental legislation this year is Gary Locke's effort to forestall federal clampdowns when the Puget Sound chinook and other salmon species hit the endangered list (now scheduled for March 23). It has two parts: an indifferent water bill (SB 5289/HB 1314), which has been (natch) watered down by agricultural and development interests but is still a modest step in the right direction. But the scary one is the timber bill (SB 5896/HB 2091), an astonishing bit of corporate welfare that, in exchange for inadequate streamside buffers from clearcutting, gives the timber industry a 20% tax cut, $2 billion or so in restitution, and exemption from the Endangered Species Act for the next 50 years. This is the timber industry speaking through Gary Locke, and removes any doubts as to whether he has any concern for the environment at all. He doesn't.

Welfare: Several bills are seeking to mitigate the extraordinary destructiveness of WorkFirst; none are faring well. SHB 1465 provided several exceptions to the limits for WorkFirst eligibility; those have all been stripped from the bill. HB 1812, HB 2225, and HB 2226 all deal with eligibility for youth between the ages of 18 and 21. SB 5798 would exempt income of a dependent who is also a full time student, but also deny assistance if an adult is on strike. SB 5063 would permit adults to complete their educations (e.g., high school) for 6 months rather than leaving school to take jobs. SSB 5299 would eliminate the residency requirement for eligibility. Incidentally, much of the estimated $240 million in WorkFirst savings (gleaned by denying benefits) is being used by Locke to pay for educational support for middle and upper income families. The rich get richer...

Working Stiffs: SB 5312 deals with prevention of workplace violence in health care settings. SB 5583 would make it an unfair practice for any employer to terminate employees or limit the term of their contract solely to avoid paying benefits. SB 5698 mandates that either a temp agency or the employer using the temp agency must pay in unemployement and workers comp premiums. SB 5534 makes some part-time workers eligible for unemployment benefits, and SB 5293 extends the right to unpaid family leave to long-term part-time workers. SB 5192 (the anti-Sidran bill) grants collective bargaining rights to prosecuting attorneys. SB 5569 extends unemployment benefits when employer unfair labor practices force a work stoppage. SB 5295 protects breast feeding in the workplace.

Youth: The HOPE Act bills (SB 5557/HB 1868) fund services to at-risk youth from unstable families. HB 1343, unfortunately, would provide model curfew laws to interested communities. SHB 1818/5988 would change truancy provisions to make parents responsible when young kids miss school. SSB 5214 concerns students with guns on school grounds. HB 1470 would assume shared parenting is always in the best interests of children of divorce.

Got that all memorized? Good! Info on bills (and their tedious texts) is available at the state's web site, http://leginfo.leg.wa.gov/. To weigh in on a bill, call your legislators via the legislative hotline: 1-800-562- 6000. An excellent source of info on social policy legislation is Nancy Amadei's weekly Policy Watch e-newsletter, available by e-mailing amadei@u.washington.edu. And there will be a big labor/social justice rally on Thursday, March 11, noon on the Capitol steps. Remember, always lobby responsibly. For amusement purposes only. You'll be billed later.

Geov Parrish