Legislative Session Week 4

Today marks the first cutoff of the 2018 legislative session – all bills must be voted out of policy committees in their house of origin.

WSNA’s 2018 Legislative Priorities can be found here.

All bills must be voted out of policy committees in their house of origin or they will be considered dead. Feb. 6 is the cutoff for bills to move out of fiscal committee in their house of origin – and then legislators will spend the next week voting bills off the floor. Bills voted off the floor by the Feb. 14 cutoff will move to the opposite chamber – and then the process of hearings begins again.

WSNA testimony on HB 2101, which enhances Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) presence in local communities, was featured in an article in the Moses Lake newspaper earlier this week.

HB 2101, sponsored by Rep. Gina McCabe (R-14), was voted out of the House Health Care Committee this week. This bill requires the Office of Crime Victims Advocacy to:

• Develop best practices that local communities may use on a voluntary basis with the goal of creating more access to SANE nurses; and,
• Develop strategies to make SANE training available without requiring nurses to travel long distances or incur big expenses.

The bill also requires the Office of Crime Victims Advocacy to consult with WSNA, the State Department of Health, the Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission and the Washington State Hospital Association when developing strategies to make SANE training more available.

The House Health Care Committee unanimously voted out the Governor’s Omnibus Opioid bill, SHB 2489, this morning. While this is how the bill came out of committee in the House, there may be additional changes on the House floor. It is worth noting that this version contains pieces of other opioid legislation that have now been integrated into the Governor’s bill (note: this bill does not include prescribing limits).

One of the changes in the Substitute House Bill that is pertinent to some WSNA members is this:

Requires health care practitioners licensed by one of the seven health professions authorized to prescribe opioids have one hour of Continuing Education on best practices for opioid prescribing, to register for the PMP following licensure or renewal or provide proof of registration and sign an attestation that the provider has reviewed the prescribing rules, in order to prescribe opioids.

The Senate Health Care Committee also voted out the Governor’s Omnibus Opioid bill, SB 6150, this week with some minor technical amendments.

It will be a couple weeks before we see further action on the Rest Breaks bill, HB 1715, due to the committee cutoffs and afterwards, days of floor action. We do expect a hearing on the Rest Breaks bill in the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee sometime soon after the Feb. 14 floor cutoff.

If you have not already contacted your Senator about the Rest Breaks bill it is not too early to do so!

The State Revenue and Economic Forecast Council meets quarterly to discuss the current and projected economic outlook for the state budget. The Council will release its report on Feb. 15, which will give the legislature the figures they need to finalize their 2018 supplement budget proposals.

Legislative budget writers are expected to release supplement budget proposals sometime the following week.

Please look for regular email updates on legislative action as session continues – we look forward to your participation in the process!