FROM THE WASHINGTON STATE COUNCIL OF FIRE FIGHTERS

Friday, January 21, and week two of the 2011 legislative session is now complete. Your lobbying team of President Kelly Fox and Legislative Liaisons Bud Sizemore and Craig Soucy has been hard at work on your behalf.

You can sign up to receive "Legislative Updates" via e-mail by e-mailing us, or view them on the web site  under the Politics and Legislation tab, then 2011 Legislative Session.

We would like to give you a brief description of the legislative process and how we monitor legislation introduced during the session. Bills are introduced every day to both the House and Senate, and we monitor the Intro reports daily to determine if any bills could have an impact on our membership. As we approach the end of week two, there have already been 1038 bills submitted, each sponsored by at least one legislator. While the majority of the bills do not pertain to us, they all have to be reviewed so the legislative team can track and work those that do.

We are also engaged in drafting legislation. On Thursday, January 20, we met with the Local Government Committee staff and started discussions about a change to RCW 52.26, Regional Fire Authorities (RFA's). This would clarify and simplify the process for new departments to join an existing RFA.

This week was the first weekly labor caucus meeting with House Democratic Leadership. Each labor group went through its issues to see if any of them might affect the other labor organizations and to inform the leadership about the bills they are working on up to this point. Pension contribution rate stability is one of the priorities we have been talking about with almost every legislator we can. LEOFF 2 is funded correctly, and we do not want to see any change to the contribution rates. So far there is no legislation to change the contribution rates.

Now let's get to the bills that we are handling so far this session! HB####, stands for a House of Representatives bill, and SB#### stands for a Senate bill. When both an "HB" and an "SB" are listed for the same topic, these are called "companion" bills and when originally drafted were identical and dropped in both legislative chambers.

Bills WSCFF is Supporting:

There are two bills that have been submitted by the LEOFF Plan 2 Retirement Board:

HB 1444 and SB 5353: would allow the surviving spouse of a member who is killed in the line of duty to remarry and continue to receive Workers' Compensation survivor benefits for life.

HB 1445 and SB 5354: would add presumption for firefighters when they experience a stroke that occurs within 72 hours of exposure to smoke, fumes, or toxic substances: or within 24 hours of a strenuous physical exertion due to firefighting activities. This would also make heart attacks and strokes presumptive for police officers if they die as a direct and proximate result of either when they occur within 24 hours of non-routine, stressful activity.

Simple majority for EMS levies (bill pending) -- Changes the super majority requirement to a simple majority while also removing the 40% validation clause for Emergency Medical Services Levies.

Bills WSCFF is opposing:

HB 1377: Changes the qualifications of an arbitrator serving as the chair for cases under interest arbitration; requires the consideration of the ability to pay for compensation, and how they determine comparable employers.

We are currently working on a few additional bills, while monitoring 36 others in both the House and Senate, and over the next few weeks we will be adding bills to both the `support' and `oppose' sections of the Legislative Update. These legislative updates are scheduled to come out on Friday of each week.