E-Newsletters

Dear friends and neighbors, This Tuesday, March 19, I will host a telephone town hall meeting with my 24^th District seatmates, Rep. Steve Tharinger of Port Townsend and Rep. Mike Chapman of Port Angeles. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. and will include highlights of legislation from the 2024 session that ...

Dear friends and neighbors, I always enjoy town hall meetings, but Monday’s was extra special. The level of participation was by far our highest ever, and it showed in the quality of discussion. The questions were plentiful and knowledgeable, and that’s important—my district seatmates, Rep. Steve Tharinger and Rep. Mike Chapman, ...

Dear friends and neighbors, Earlier this month, the Senate passed two major bills on a long Saturday afternoon. It was no accident that we passed both bills the same day, because they are related. Senate Bill 5237 is a sweeping piece of legislation that addresses the most urgent concern for a ...

Dear friends and neighbors, Though the pandemic has made direct interactions a little trickier this legislative session, one communications channel is unchanged—the telephone town hall meetings I host with my district seatmates, Rep. Steve Tharinger of Port Townsend and Rep. Mike Chapman of Port Angeles. Our next telephone town hall is set ...

Dear friends and neighbors, Olympia can be a stuffy place. We vote on bills with titles like “Dredged material disposal,” “Irrigation dist. elections” and “Bridge year pilot program.” Then you get a bill titled “Prohibiting the feeding of garbage to swine.” It’s not often that a bill title contains two of the ...

Dear friends and neighbors, Now that we’ve passed the first big cut-off deadline of this legislative session, we know which bills have died and which are moving forward. And two of the biggest deal with protecting sensitive personal information that has become one of the most valued and targeted commodities in ...

Dear friends and neighbors, One of my continuing efforts over the years has been to reduce the cost of the expensive prescription drugs that can strain household budgets. Two years ago, for instance, I secured $20,000 in the state operating budget to study the feasibility of the state producing certain generic ...

Dear friends and neighbors, First the bad news, much of which you already know all too well. The pandemic continues to disrupt our personal and professional lives, our businesses and our communities. While we race to vaccinate the populace and acquire herd immunity, the damage to our businesses and our economy ...

Dear friends and neighbors, We often enact laws to correct or eliminate activities that are causing harm. What’s even better is when we can address a problem before it can even become a problem. That’s the case with my legislation to ban seabed mining, a growing industry that ravages natural habitat to ...

Dear friends and neighbors, Probably no event in our lifetime has forced us to change the ways we live and work so dramatically as the COVID-19 pandemic. Even when it comes to the Legislature, the pandemic is determining what we’ll do and how we’ll do it. WHAT WE’RE DOING is moving fast ...