Week of February 28th: Legislative Update
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Week 8 Legislative Update: Down to the wire
We are in the final stretch. Within days, our priority legislation will be up for votes on the Senate and House floors. By Friday, we’ll know if we have passed our bills.
There is no time to waste.
We have just days to ensure that our legislators prioritize action on climate, farmland protection and housing affordability by passing HB 1099, SB 5042 and HB 1769. With many bills up for consideration and little time for floor debate, it’s crucial that legislators know that we can’t wait to pass these bills.
Your Futurewise staffers are working hard behind the scenes to set these bills up for success on the floor and now we need to make our final ask of you.
First and foremost, if you haven’t already, today is the day to contact your legislators! We’re prioritizing asks on HB 1099 and SB 5042. Please click on the links below:
Now we need you to ask 5 friends to reach out to their legislators as you have just done. Below, we’ve included a sample text or email that you can send.
“Hi [YOUR FRIEND’S NAME], please take 3 minutes right now for action on climate and farmland protection! Futurewise is working on legislation to promote just, climate resilient Washington communities and to protect our local farms from suburban sprawl. We have just days left to pass these bills, so I hope you’ll contact your legislators to ask for YES votes on these bills. Here’s the super easy forms to send an email: https://bit.ly/1099senate_action and https://bit.ly/5042_houseaction. Thanks!”
GMA Funding in the Supplemental Budget
One final quick update for you: I’m excited to share that we’re likely to see big increases in funding for GMA implementation in this year’s supplemental budget.
What does that mean? Well, the Growth Management Act is the statewide framework for how we plan our communities. But each individual jurisdiction (that’s towns, cities and counties) actually have to do the work (read: hire staff) to create the local plans that put the GMA into action. Often one of our biggest barriers to making changes at the state level is concerns about funding for implementation. (You might have heard this referred to as “local planning dollars.”)
That’s why we’re so excited to see the funding proposals coming out of the House and Senate for local planning. What’s more – the House budget directly includes funding to implement HB 1099. We’ll know the final numbers in a few weeks, but it’s looking to be orders of magnitude larger than years past – yay!
With just days to go, I know we can do this together.