Update from Olympia – February 5, 2016 Greetings Friends and Neighbors, We have reached the half-way point in the 2016 legislative session. When the Legislature adjourned last July, our state’s budget was balanced, making critical investments in our state’s K-12 system, investing in higher education and our state’s safety net....

Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, has introduced legislation to address growing privacy concerns stemming from a new state rule that loosens access to gender-specific facilities at public and private organizations. The rule change, quietly adopted by the state Human Rights Commission on Dec. 26, permits persons to use locker rooms,...

Update from Olympia – January 21, 2015 Greetings Friends and Neighbors, I hope your new year is off to a wonderful start. Things are already busy here in Olympia in the second week of the 2016 legislative session. With only 60 days in this “short” session, the Legislature must focus...

Controversial abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, has again garnered national attention with the release of another undercover video that indicates the organization may be continuing to skirt federal law with illegal abortion practices and by selling human body parts. The videos, four in all, appear to show conversations that could suggest...

A critical piece of legislation for Washington State’s economic health has been resurrected during the 2015 second special session. For two years Sen. Judy Warnick has been working to boost rural economic development. Wednesday the Senate approved Senate Bill 5442 which makes needed changes to the Community and Economic Revitalization...

Today, on the final day of the Legislature’s special session, the Senate unanimously voted to allocate $18 million to the State Drought Preparedness Account, allowing the state Department of Ecology to begin emergency drought response as soon as the bill is approved by the House of Representatives and signed into...

This post originally appeared in the leadership blog of the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus, Exit 105. What would you say if you were presented with an agreement over which you had no say, was negotiated in secret and cost you millions — and the only thing you could do was turn thumbs-up or...