Category Archives: Senate

SB5489

SB5489 – Requires state agencies to use all practical means and measures to promote environmental justice.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Saldaña (D; 37th District; Seattle)
Current status – Returned to Senate Rules 3rd Reading by the House; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to pass out of the Senate by cutoff; placed in the “X” file.
Next step would be – Dead bill…
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB2009 was an extensive revision and rewrite of the original version of this bill; the second substitute Senate bill is now pretty close to the House version.

2019 Legislative History –
In the Senate (Passed)
Had a hearing on a proposed substitute in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 13th. Passed out of committee and referred to Ways and Means February 19th. Had a hearing there February 27th; a second substitute bill was further amended and passed out of Ways & Means February 28th. Placed on 2nd reading by Rules Committee March 5th. Passed the Senate March 8th.
In the House
Referred to the House Committee on State Government and Tribal Relations. Had a hearing March 19th; replaced by a striker which passed out of committee March 26th. Referred to Appropriations; had a hearing April 6th. Amended and passed out of committee April 8th. Referred to Rules; placed on 2nd reading April 10th. Still in Rules by the end of 2019 session; Returned to Senate Rules 3rd Reading by the House.

Comments –
In the House
The changes in the House striker are summarized on its last page. It shifts power back toward the task force, saying that agencies “must adopt” the use of the cumulative impact analysis, and “must adopt” it consistent with the task force’s guidance on how to use it if there is any. It specifies the use of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Washington Tracking Network for the cumulative impact analysis, rather than the UW study, and adds some reporting about needs for funding and uncompleted tasks.

Amendments in House Appropriations require the use of tribal exposure scenarios as a factor in the analysis of cumulative impact areas, have the report include best practices for local governments to include environmental justice principles in comprehensive planning under the GMA, and make the bill null and void if it isn’t funded in this year’s budget.

In the Senate
Second Substitute Senate version
This aligned the bill with the significant changes in HB2009, though it’s different in some minor ways.

Like HB2009, it now changes the central definition of “environmental justice” from “fair treatment and [a] right … to have access to a safe, healthy environment” to the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people … with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” (That is, it’s now about due process, not outcomes.)

Like HB2009, it changes the composition and power of the task force that they set up. That group no longer creates rules about defining and implementing environmental justice that state agencies must adopt. It develops models, methods, best practices, and recommendations in the House version. In the House version there are “model rules for agency adoption”; in the Senate version the task force creates “guidance for state agencies.” It also says that “if time and resources permit” the task force should do the work on equity analyses, gaps in research, utilizing the precautionary approach, and cataloging and cross-referencing all the state agencies’ research and data about people’s health and environment that are required in HB2009.

The House bill has the Governor appoint the representative of a statewide environmental justice organization to co-chair the task force. (That unspecified organization is presumably Front & Centered, the bill’s creator.) The Senate has him appoint ” a member who is well-informed on the principles of environmental justice and with expertise in statewide environmental justice issues.” They both replace four representatives living in communities with high levels of pollution with three members from some currently unspecified “organization” appointed by the co-chairs with diversity in mind. They reduce the task force’s size by dropping a tribal leader; the representatives of labor, of business, and of statewide environmental interests; and the potential representatives from each of any other agencies the Governor might add. (Since there are still representatives from eight agencies on the task force, the Governor’s appointees would have a clear majority in this revised group.)

This substitute bill does not include HB2009’s provision about including environmental justice considerations in SEPA analyses. Section 5 (1) uses somewhat different language than HB2009’s about the degree to which agencies are required to use the task force’s recommendations, but it isn’t clear to me if one of them gives the agencies more latitude than the other.

One amendment to the 2nd Substitute in Senate Ways & Means added back a tribal representative, one from business and one from labor, now appointed by the Governor.

Front and Centered has a flyer about the bill.

Summary of the original version –
Creates a task force to study and and report recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor on how to incorporate environmental justice principles into the ways state agencies operate. “Environmental justice” means that all people have the right to a safe and healthy environment; that no group of people should bear disproportionately high exposure to pollution or adverse human health or environmental impacts; and that all groups should have appropriate access to meaningful public participation in decisions that affect their environment.

Within sixty days of the task force’s report, Ecology is to provide uniform rules and guidelines for implementing the recommendations to all state agencies on the task force. The agencies must use cumulative impact analyses to identify highly impacted communities, create target environmental health standards for counties and census tracts all over the state, and prioritize highly impacted communities and their vulnerable populations in the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, policies, and funding decisions.

The “vulnerable populations” it covers are defined as communities that experience disproportionate cumulative risk from “environmental burdens due to adverse socioeconomic factors, including unemployment, high housing and transportation costs relative to income, access to food and health care, and linguistic isolation; and sensitivity factors, such as low birth weight and higher rates of hospitalization.” “Environmental burdens” include cumulative risks caused by historic and current exposure to conventional and toxic hazards; adverse environmental effects, including environmental conditions caused or made worse by contamination or pollution or that create vulnerabilities to climate impacts; and exposure to hazards made worse by changes in the climate.

Comments –
Though the bill currently says the task force must “discuss… draft rules for agencies”, the rest of it says it is to draft rules agencies must adopt, not just discuss some possible rules.

Details –
The bill specifies the membership of the task force, including representatives of at least eight state agencies; four representatives from different areas of the state who live in communities that are most significantly burdened by, and vulnerable to, high levels of pollution; and a number of other stakeholders. It would be co-chaired by a representative of statewide environmental justice interests and the executive director of the Governor’s interagency council on health disparities. It’s to hold at least four regional meetings in different parts of the state, and complete a report by July 31, 2020.

State agencies must review and revise their rules, programs, plans, and policies every five years to ensure they are promoting reductions in disproportionate environmental burdens and attainment of the environmental health targets the bill establishes, and the task force is to reconvene “five years after the adoption of the last rules to evaluate the findings of each department and update their findings and recommendations.”

The report must discuss:

Methods to increase public participation and engagement by providing meaningful opportunities for involvement to all people;
Draft rules for agency adoption regarding cumulative impact analyses that will identify highly impacted communities, based on analyses of vulnerable populations and environmental burdens conducted by the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. (These also include any census tracts that are fully or partly on tribal land.);
Methods for meaningfully consulting vulnerable populations in periodically evaluating and updating the designation of highly impacted communities and the cumulative impact analysis;
Methods for creating and implementing analyses to evaluate environmental justice, including but not limited to cumulative impact analyses, into all significant planning, decision making, and investments, including describing potential risks, benefits, and opportunities for these communities and populations;
Methods for prioritizing these communities and populations by identifying and, where legally and fiscally feasible, maximizing inspection, enforcement actions, investment of resources, planning, permitting, and public participation to reduce environmental health disparities and advance a healthy environment for all residents;
Methods for cataloging and cross-referencing current research and data for programs within all state agencies relating to the health and environment of people of all races, cultures, and income levels;
Methods for establishing a qualitative target environmental health level for each county or larger area, and a quantitative target at the census tract level or larger;
Recommended criteria for identifying and addressing gaps in current research and data collection to inform agency actions, refine cumulative impact methodology, and identify factors that may impede achieving environmental justice; and,
Methods for incorporating the precautionary approach to decision making, including permitting, to the extent allowed by law.

SB5561

SB5561 – Specifies requirements for lead agencies’ evaluations of greenhouse gas emissions.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Takko (D; 19th District; Longview)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology, February 19th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to make it out of committee by 2020 cutoff; dead bill.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1549 is an identical companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill requires the Department of Ecology, in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, to develop a rule limiting agencies’ evaluations of greenhouse gas emissions.

Comments –
As I read the bill, a new source using new technology wouldn’t actually have to demonstrate it would have lower emissions than what it was replacing, or even that it probably would, in order for an agency to have to “accommodate and encourage” the technology in evaluating its emissions. It only has to “intend” to have lower emissions.

I’m not sure what the section that says you can’t require a project to mitigate emissions by more than a proportional share of the State’s greenhouse gas reduction targets is supposed to mean. (If the targets require a 50% reduction by 2050, and you’re building a project in 2037, do you need to reduce your initial proposal’s emissions by 50%?) Whatever the numbers, it seems as if it makes it easy to submit a proposal that doesn’t do much about controlling emissions, and then to cheerfully agree to reduce them by whatever proportion this is, requiring Ecology to approve your project.

Details:

The rule must establish a threshold below which an action’s direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases will not be judged to produce probable, significant adverse impacts;
It must establish a methodology for determining when the direct and indirect impacts of actions with emissions above that threshold will produce probable adverse impacts;
It must provide guidance for lead agencies about when it’s appropriate to issue a determination of nonsignificance or a mitigated determination of nonsignificance for an action;
It must require agencies to evaluate the significance of global life-cycle emissions in the context of global carbon emissions, and the significance of emissions within Washington state in the context of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the state;
It must acknowledge that significant cumulative impacts caused by other greenhouse gas emissions don’t constitute substantial evidence that a proposed action’s contributions to global emissions are cumulatively significant;
It must indicate how an agency should evaluate market substitution or displacement effects when assessing the life cycle impacts of an action;
It must provide guidance for addressing emissions from new sources which specifically accommodates and encourages new technology intended to substitute for or replace
existing technologies and achieve the same production goals with fewer greenhouse gas emissions;
It must establish a framework for calculating the direct and indirect emissions it’s reasonable to attribute to an action. That must specify the scope and context for estimating the emissions, including whether to count the global emissions attributable to the action, or only those that will occur within the state. It must authorize agencies to “to incorporate prior environmental review and other inventories that quantify emissions for categories of activities and industries that have been prepared by the Department of Ecology, including those required by section 2 of this act, industry groups, or other lead agencies.” [I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Maybe it means they can only use assessments prepared by Ecology, but I think it’s probably supposed to mean they can use assessments by industry groups and other agencies if they choose to.] It must authorize them to rely on adopted policies and regulations of other agencies with regulatory jurisdiction over any direct or indirect emissions of an action to predict emissions and emission trends. [I don’t know if this includes agencies in other states and Federal agencies or not.]
It must establish a threshold of direct emissions attributable to an action below which agencies may not consider global life-cycle emissions associated with that action;
It must establish a methodology for agencies to use in identifying reasonable mitigation measures for identified environmental impacts. [Proposals can only be denied if the reasonable measures won’t be sufficient to mitigate the impacts.] This must recognize measures taken by the applicant or others to mitigate the impacts; it must let the agency rely on a range of mitigation measures including market offsets, new technology with lower emissions, alternate fuels, best available control technologies (BACT), potential efficiency measures, and, any other actions or measures required by other agencies with jurisdiction over greenhouse gas emissions that would result in a reduction of the emissions associated with the action. It has to identify acceptable sources for the purchase of offsets. The methodology may not require mitigation in excess of a proportional share of the state’s reduction targets or require mitigation to completely eliminate the impact of an action’s emissions in order to be considered sufficient for approving a proposal.
It must establish a methodology through which an agency can address impacts of climate change on a proposed action through resiliency and adaptation planning, including site design and other measures to address sea level rise and increased risks from storms and wildfire.

The Department must report to the appropriate legislative committees on the emissions for categories of industries and activities and anticipated trends, as well as how those inventories and trends may be used in environmental reviews.

SB5555

SB5555 – Excludes most solar systems from renewable energy tax incentives.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Ericksen (R; 42nd District; Bellingham)
Current status – Had a hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 6th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to make it out of committee by 2020 cutoff; dead bill.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –

For a solar system to be eligible for renewable energy tax incentives, all of its components, including the solar cells, would have to be produced or manufactured in the United States, or in a facility that the Department of Ecology certified as meeting all the relevant Washington State environmental, health, and safety standards.

SB5576

SB5576 – Improving sustainability and climate science education.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lynda Wilson (R; 17th District; Vancouver)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education February 18th. Passed out of committee February 22nd. Referred to Ways and Means. Still in the house of origin by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by Ways and Means.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1496 is the identical companion bill in the House.

Comments –
There’s an article about the results of the climate education project that the Legislature funded last year in the Green Schools Catalyst Quarterly.

Summary –
The bill updates the label in the current list of topics that must be taught in public schools from “science with particular reference to the environment” to “science with special reference to the environmental and sustainability standards.” ((OSPI sets and revises these State standards for schools to describe what all students at different grade levels “should know and be able to do in the area of Environmental and Sustainability Education”.

If funding were made available, the bill would require OSPI to develop grants for community non-profits and educational service districts to develop plans for teacher education in next generation science standards, including climate science standards. Comprehensive and targeted comprehensive schools, and communities historically underserved by climate science education would get priority for these. In selecting applications and prioritizing grants, SPI could consider applicants’ previous success in developing teachers’ ability to help students understand climate science standards.

In this context, “climate science” means the ideas from various sciences, the integrating concepts, and the science and engineering practices in the standards that lead a student toward climate science literacy. “Climate science literacy” means understanding your influence on climate and its influence on individuals, society, and the environment. (A “climate-literate person” understands the essential principles of the climate system; knows how to assess scientifically credible information about climate; can communicate meaningfully about climate and climate change; and can make informed and responsible decisions about actions that might affect the climate.)

SB5476

SB5476 – Protects established composting sites from being sued for creating a public nuisance.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Kuderer (D; 48th District; Bellevue)
Current status – Referred to Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to make it out of committee by cutoff; dead bill.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1167 is an identical companion bill in the House.

Summary –
Currently, agriculture and forestry activities that are consistent with good practices in those fields, and were established before other surrounding activities (like neighboring housing developments), are protected from lawsuits claiming that they are creating a public nuisance because of things like smells or noise, unless they’re having a substantial negative effect on public health or safety.

The bill extends this protection to composting activities. (Composting must also be meeting city and county regulations to qualify for this protection.)

SB5353

SB5353 – Promoting redevelopment to support transit.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Zeiger (R; 25th District; Pierce County)
Current status – Had a hearing before the Senate Committee on Local Government February 5th. Passed out of committee February 19th and referred to Ways and Means. Still in the house of origin by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by Ways and Means.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill authorizes certain counties to lower property taxes to encourage the development of more housing in areas around transit by expanding some current provisions for lowering taxes in other “residential targeted areas”.

Details:
Counties can reduce taxes on new housing units in residential targeted areas by using special lower valuations in their property tax assessments.

There are various requirements for when these can be created, including some about where they can be located. The bill expands the rules about permissible locations to allow them to be created by counties that want to promote transit supportive densities and efficient land use in an area that’s within an urban growth area; is in the potential annexation area of a city with a population of at least two hundred thousand; and is within a quarter mile of a corridor where bus service is scheduled at least every fifteen minutes for no less than ten hours per day. (The route must be in service or have planned service within five years).

SB5308

SB5308 – Oversight for municipal energy service contracts.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Short (R; 7th District; Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille counties)
Current status – Returned to Senate Rules 3rd Reading by House at end of 2019 Session; Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to pass out of the Senate by cutoff; placed in the “X” file.
Next step would be – Dead bill…
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

2019 Legislative History –
In the Senate (Passed)
Had a hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology on February 5th. Substitute bill passed out of committee February 20th; referred to Ways and Means. Had a hearing there February 27th; amended 2nd substitute with minor changes passed out of that committee February 28th. Placed on 2nd reading by Rules Committee March 5th. Passed by the Senate March 12th.
In the House –
Referred to the Committee on State Government & Tribal Relations. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; returned to Senate Rules 3rd Reading by House at end of 2019 Session

Comments –
The 1st substitute replaces the complaint provisions with a requirement for DES to consider contractors’ past performance and comments from municipalities in revising the registry. Almost all the minor changes made in Ways and Means are summarized on the first page of the 2nd substitute..

Summary –

Performance based energy service contractors sign contracts to increase buildings’ efficiency. They provide the capital, do the work, and guarantee a certain level of performance in return for long-term payments from the owners, who often gain from the savings on their utility bills.
Currently, if a city or county decides to negotiate one of these contracts, other State procurement requirements don’t apply to the project. The bill creates a system for overseeing their contracts.

Details –
The bill requires a conference with the Department of Enterprise Services by the parties to one of these contracts about the capabilities of the energy equipment and services, expected outcomes for the municipality, and whether other energy equipment and services might be better for the municipality’s purposes. Any proposed revisions have to be recorded and agreed to by all the parties.

The technical documents for these projects have to be prepared by an architect and/or a professional engineer.

The department has to provide third-party verification of the work within 90 days after it’s finished, to see that equipment and services are installed and performing correctly and that the municipality’s staff has been trained to use and maintain the equipment.

The bill requires withholding 10% of the any funding the department provides to help municipalities obtain a contract until monitoring is complete.

The bill creates a system for handling complaints about the work by cities and counties. These have to be filed within two years of the discovery of a defect. If a complaint is filed, 10% of any funding supplied by the department _must_ be withheld or recouped from the contractor, though it _may_ be provided to the contractor after the complaint is resolved. The department currently maintains a registry of these companies, and contractors are to be removed from that as soon as any complaint is filed, and only returned to it when it’s resolved.

The Joint Legislative Audit Review Committee must report to the Legislature by the end of 2020 on the structure of the performance-based contracting services program, including the roles of the department, contractors, municipalities; its cost-effectiveness; whether these contracts adequately protect municipalities from defects; whether they lead to superior outcomes for municipalities compared to general procurement practices that aren’t required for one of these projects; and whether the program limits the range of options for energy equipment and services available to municipalities.

SB5347

SB5347 – Requires utility publicity for climate programs to display “discernible and quantifiable effects” of an individual’s participation on global emissions.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Ericksen (R, 42nd District, Whatcom County)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Energy, Environment & Technology February 6th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
Requires any utility publicity indicating that a benefit, program or service will help deal in any way with the problem of climate change to include a “detailed description of the discernable [sic] and quantifiable effects” it will have on global climate change, displayed in a way that “discloses the discernable [sic] and quantifiable effects on global climate change attributable to the average individual customer” using it.

Comments –
Don’t feed the troll…

SB5329

SB5329 – Updates Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council operations. (By request of the Site Evaluation Council.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nguyen (D, 34th District, White Center)
Current status – Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology. Passed out of the committee January 31st. Referred to Rules; placed on 2nd reading February 5th. Still in house of origin by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1332 is an identical companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill adds some language about the State’s need to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and increase its reliance on clean energy to the section of the code about its intentions, and says that the bill intends “to streamline application review for energy facilities that use alternative energy resources to meet the state’s energy goals.”

The Council would have its own staff, rather than relying on the UTC’s. The bill reduces its size, and would no longer add a member from an area where a project has been proposed during the time it’s reaching a decision about its recommendation to the Governor on that project. (Instead, there’s a member representing the Association of Washington Cities and one from the Washington State Association of Counties.) It adds a tribal representative.

After the environmental review of the project, the Council can hold a public hearing about whether or not genuine issues of fact on matters the council deems material to its recommendation exist. If it then decides there aren’t, and that the project is consistent and compliant with local land use requirements then it can skip the requirement for holding a formal adjudicative hearing under the Administrative Procedures Act, and proceed to make a recommendation.

Details –
The bill eliminates a member from DNR, and a number of optional memberships for various agencies, and it makes a number of small procedural changes expanding the Council’s discretion and powers.

SB5336

SB5336 – Advancing electric transportation.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Palumbo (D, 1st District, Snohomish County) (Requested by the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology, February 12th. Significantly changed substitute bill passed out of committee February 20th. Referred to the Committee on Transportation, which passed a 2nd substitute with some further changes March 6th. Referred to Ways and Means. Had a hearing March 19th 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1664 is an identical companion bill in the House.

Comments –
First substitute:
The changes in the first substitute bill are summarized on p. 5 of the Senate Bill Report. (However, the bill only expands existing commercial vehicle tax breaks; it doesn’t “add” them. The original didn’t “require” Ecology to adopt the ZEV standard; it removed the prohibition on doing that.)

The substitute leaves the prohibition on adopting the Zero Emission Vehicle Standard in place. The Department of Commerce is to create a program to provide, subject to funding, rebates between $1,250 and $5,000 for low and moderate income households in areas with high levels of air pollution that scrap a vehicle that’s more than ten years old and replace it with a new or used zero-emission vehicle. [My economist friends predict that this will raise the price of used ZEVs.]

It specifies that local sales and use taxes are included in the exemptions. It roughly doubles the B&O and public utility tax credits for clean alternative fuel commercial vehicles, raises the annual cap on these exemptions from six million to forty, and extends the exemption from 2021 to 2050. Rather than raising registration fees on EVs, it funds the first thirty-three million in repayments to the general fund for the commercial vehicle tax exemptions from the multi-modal transportation account and anything above that as well as the reimbursements for the sales and use tax exemptions from the forward flexible account (which seems to be some part of the motor vehicle fund).

It makes all utilities’ authorizations for investments in EV infrastructure dependent on their creation of approved electrification of transportation plans, and sets 2030 as the limit to how long private utilities can earn incentive rates of return on investments in electric vehicle infrastructure. (The original bill only seemed to provide specific provisions for private utilities and municipal utilities, not the PUDs.)

Second substitute:
The second substitute has the tax exemptions expire at a $100 million cap, rather than when they’ve been received by 10% of the registered vehicles, and simply caps the commercial vehicle exemptions at $33 million. It eliminates the rebate program for scrapping vehicles.

Summary of the original bill –

Washington would join the other nine states that have adopted California’s zero emission vehicle standards. (Those currently require manufacturers to have about 2.5% of the cars they sell in a given state be free of tailpipe emissions, and establish a market for trading credits that manufacturers who sell more battery and fuel-cell cars than required can sell to those who don’t sell enough or decide it would be cheaper to buy credits than produce and sell the cars.)

The bill requires all utilities to engage in electrifying transportation, and specifically authorizes them to build and promote charging infrastructure (as well as to invest in making energy infrastructure in general more efficient). It removes the requirement that their chargers must be in places where cars will plug in for at least four hours if they want to earn a rate of return on the investment.

It authorizes cities with municipal utilities serving more than 400,000 customers to do as much as the Washington Constitution allows to provide financing to help customers electrify transportation, and to offer programs, services, and make investments to provide that, if that will benefit ratepayers and the city has adopted a plan for electrifying transportation.

Utilities regulated by the UTC can submit a plan for investing in chargers or providing other programs, services, or incentives to support electrifying transportation. (In fact, they now have to have a plan if they want earn an increased rate of return on EV infrastructure.) The plan may not “increase costs to customers in excess of one-quarter of one percent above the benefits of electric transportation to all customers” over the twenty years of its current integrated resource plan. The UTC can allow an addition to the rate of return of up to 2% for capital investments in chargers behind the customer’s meter, provided that won’t increase costs to ratepayers more than 0.25%.

The bill provides a sales tax exemption of up to $1,000 and a use tax exemption of up to $1,000 on the sale or lease of new or used fully electric cars, light trucks, and medium-duty passenger vehicles with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of less than $45,000 for the base model. (If you buy the car at the end of the lease you can get the tax exemptions on that purchase as well as on the lease payments.) The exemption expires when the number of vehicles that have received the exemption reaches 10% of the number of cars, light trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles in the state.

It funds the program with the vehicle registration fee for plug-in cars that go at least 30 miles on the battery and raises it from $100/year to $150. (That fee currently goes to the motor vehicle fund to be spent on highways.)

Details –
In reviewing a private utility’s electrification plan, the UTC has to consider multiple options for the electrification of transportation for all customer classes; its impact on loads, and whether demand response or opportunities for managing load are appropriate; system reliability and distribution system efficiencies; interoperability concerns, including the interaction of hardware and software systems in proposals; benefits and costs; and the overall customer experience.

The bill removes the current prohibition against adopting California’s zero emissions vehicle requirements, and no longer requires Ecology to have any changes in emissions rules reviewed by an advisory group of stakeholders.

SB5280

HB5280 – Authorizes community solar gardens.
Prime Sponsor – Senator McCoy (D, 38th District, Snohomish County)
Current status – Had a hearing on a substitute bill in the Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 12th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The substitute specifies that any project has to meet the current requirements for community solar projects in RCW 80.28.375. These cover registration with the WSU Energy program and bonding (if required). It now requires at least ten subscribers or one per ten kilowatts, rather than at least five subscribers none of whom could own more than 40% of the project.

Olympia Community Solar has a flyer about the original bill.

Summary –
Community solar gardens are utility scale projects, in which subscribers buy a share of the project and get credits for their share of the output on their utility bills. The bill says they’re intended to exist “outside of tax-related subsidy programs”, and that they “include community solar projects” as those are defined in the current law about tax incentives for renewable energy. (That program has reached its cap, and is not allowing new projects.) For twenty-five years, subscribers would get credits on their bills at the retail rate for their share of the project’s output.

The bill requires each private utility to submit a plan for operating them to the UTC by January 1, 2020, and requires public utilities to submit plans to the Department of Commerce.

Comments –
The bill doesn’t say much of anything about the requirements for creating one of the profit or non-profit corporation that can own these projects in addition to utilities. It doesn’t say anything about provisions for transferring a subscriber’s contract if they leave the service area, or about what happens to a contract if one of these subscriber organizations goes out of business.

Details –
Utility Plans
The UTC can approve, disapprove or modify a private utility’s plan, and the bill talks about “a plan approved by Commerce” (though it doesn’t seem to specify Commerce’s powers over public utilities’ plans in the same way.)

Plans must:

Reasonably allow for the creation, financing, and accessibility of community solar gardens;
Provide guidelines for including low-income customers as subscribers, and may allow a preference for community solar gardens that have low-income subscribers;
Establish uniform standards, fees, and processes for the interconnection of projects that allow the utility to recover reasonable interconnection costs for each one;
Be consistent with the public interest;
Identify the information that must be provided to customers to ensure fair disclosure of future costs and benefits of subscriptions;
Include a program implementation schedule;
Identify all proposed rules, fees, and charges;
Describe how the program will be promoted;
Describe the system for crediting each subscriber’s monthly bill; and,
Identify the preferred locations for solar gardens within a utility’s distribution system, if the utility has analyzed it and designated some that don’t unreasonably restrict solar gardens’ development.

Each utility has to maintain a public website with this information and information about each project in its service area.

Limits on projects
A project must have subscribers for all the electricity it generates, and they have to be in the utility’s service area. It has to have more than five subscribers, and none of them can subscribe for more than 40% of the project. At least 40% of the capacity has to be allocated to residential and small business customers with loads under 40kWs, and at least 10% of it has to be for customers who are eligible for the State’s low-income energy assistance plan.

Subscriptions have to be for at least one kilowatt, and (including any other distributed energy generation at the location) one can’t be for more than 120% of your annual yearly consumption “at the premises to which the subscription is attached.” (Apparently, you could have more than one subscription if you were a customer with more than one location.)

The project must be located on the utility’s distribution system, and within a preferred location on the system, if the utility’s plan identifies any.

Subscriber organizations
These are for-profit or non-profit organizations that own or operate one or more solar gardens. They own the renewable energy credits generated by their projects, and can sell them. They contract with subscribers who want to own a share of a project, but that doesn’t make them regulated as utilities. They’re responsible for making a monthly electronic report of each subscriber’s share of the output to the subscriber’s utility, so the utility can credit their bills.

They have to have a system for resolving any disputes with subscribers.

Regulations
The UTC and Commerce can coordinate in developing rules for these projects, and should have those for private and pubic utilities be the same, to the extent that that’s practical.

SB5128

SB5128 – Reduces the registration fee for electric motorcycles.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Rolfes (D, 23rd District, Kitsap County)
Current status – Had hearing before the Senate Transportation Committee January 28th. Passed out of committee February 5th. Referred to Rules. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Sent to the “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
Senate Bill Report is available here.

Comments –
The substitute bill merely changed the date at which the reduction would become effective by a few months.

Summary –
Currently, owners of electric motorcycles pay the same annual registration fee as the owners of electric cars that can travel over 30 miles on the battery. The bill reduces the fee for motorcycles to $30/yr.

Comments – Gasoline motorcycles and scooters actually produce more air pollution and smog than cars; in fact, the California Air Resources Board estimates an average motorbike is about 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV. They are about twice as fuel efficient as an average cars, though, and they take less energy to produce, so riding one does reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

An electric bike doesn’t produce any smog, and riding one instead of a gas powered bike produces roughly half the reduction in CO2 emissions that switching from a gas car to an electric one does. (If the gas car is going 10,000 miles a year at 25 mpg it’s using 400 gallons; the gas bike would be using 200 gallons.)

SB5077

SB5077 – Prohibiting single-use plastic straws
Prime Sponsor – Senator Kuderer (D, 48th District, Bellevue)
Current status – Returned to the Senate Rules Committee at the end of the 2019 session. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Placed in the Senate “X” file February 24th.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

2019 Legislative History –
In the Senate (Passed) –
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 24th. Substitute bill passed out of committee February 14th. Referred to Rules for 2nd Reading. Passed by the Senate with minor amendment by prime sponsor March 4th.
In the House –
Referred to the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Had a hearing March 14th. Replaced by a striker, further amended, and passed out of committee April 1st. Referred to the Rules Committee. Returned to the Senate Rules Committee at the end of the 2019 session.

Comments: – It isn’t obvious that banning plastic straws will reduce greenhouse emissions, though it might, and that’s not the main point of the proposal in any case. (To decide whether or not it would you’d need a full life-cycle analysis of their use compared to that of paper straws, glass straws, bamboo straws, the new plastic covers Starbucks is introducing with lids that make it easier to drink from them, and so on…) This is equally true of the bills about banning plastic carryout bags (HB1205) and reducing the use of plastic packaging (HB1204).

The substitute bill dropped the prohibition on the sales and distribution of plastic straws, would keep restaurants from using them unless a customer asked for one, and made some other changes which are summarized on pp. 2-3 of the Senate Bill Report.

The changes in the House striker are summarized on its last page. It and the amendments made a number of minor adjustments to the rules, and increased the potential fines to $250/day for the third and subsequent violations and a maximum of $3,000 a year.

Details – Bans sale and distribution of all plastic straws as of July 30, 2020, including ones that are compostable, biodegradeable, and/or made from plant-based plastics. Creates a process for recommendations to Legislature about addressing the needs of health care facilities and disabled individuals and about avoiding unintended consequences. Imposes a fine of $25/day for violations after two warnings, with a maximum fine of $300.

SB5044

SB5043 – Authorizes putting measures that would cancel any of the Sound Transit taxes in a county on its ballot by petition.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

– Authorizes a county’s voters to opt out of all the funding sources in the Sound Transit expansion package approved by regional voters in 2016, and apparently also to opt out of any other previous Sound Transit funding measures.

My Comments:
Here’s the results of the 2016 vote, compared with the boundaries of Senator O’Ban’s district. (The green areas at the bottom of the voting results map are the military bases in the southwest area of the district.)

Whatever its other virtues, the expansion is a very expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Sound Transit estimates that most of the riders will be people who would have been riding buses otherwise, rather than people shifting to light rail from cars.) The Washington Policy Center pointed out that Sound Transit’s estimates for the planned extension from Northgate to Lynwood imply a cost of $612/metric ton of anticipated reductions, without considering emissions from construction or operating costs. (They did not take account of the value of the other benefits that the expansion will produce, like savings in commuter time; those might be what the money’s paying for, and the CO2 reductions might just be icing on the cake.) KUOW reported the additional emissions from construction steel and concrete.

Details:
Would require the signatures of 8% of the voters in the last election for Governor to put a measure on the ballot.

SB5043

SB5043 – Authorizes putting measures that would cancel future Sound Transit taxes in a county, and/or the current car tab, car rental, and property taxes, on its ballot by petition.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

– Authorizes a county’s voters to opt out of the car tab tax, taxes on car rentals, and the property tax approved as part of the regional Sound Transit expansion package in 2016, and to vote to opt out of other future Sound Transit funding measures.

Details:
Would require the signatures of 8% of the voters in the last election for Governor to put a measure on the ballot.

SB5042

SB5042 – Base car tab fees for Sound Transit expansion funding on Kelley Blue Book or national automobile dealers’ association values.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Committee on Transportation, February 26th at 1:30. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

My Comments:
The $54 Billion Sound Transit expansion package voters passed in 2016 included about $8 Billion in funding from an increase in car tab fees. The measure based the fees on the older of the existing valuation systems, which produced large increases from the previous year, and a lot of complaints. Last year, bills to reduce the fees in two different ways passed the Senate (SB5955) and the House (HB2201) with large majorities, but nothing reached the Governor.

Whatever its other virtues, the expansion is an expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Sound Transit estimates that most of the riders will be people who would have been riding buses otherwise, rather than people shifting to light rail from cars.) The Washington Policy Center pointed out that Sound Transit’s estimates for the planned extension from Northgate to Lynwood imply a cost of $612/metric ton of anticipated reductions, without considering emissions from construction or operating costs. (They did not take account of the value of the other benefits that the expansion will produce, like savings in commuter time; those might be what the money’s paying for, and the CO2 reductions might just be icing on the cake.) KUOW reported the additional emissions from construction steel and concrete.

SB5037

SB5037 – Would require Sound Transit to get additional voter approval if the cost to complete the expansion plan approved in 2016 increases beyond $54 Billion; if any projects are added or subtracted; or if there are any significant changes in the scope of the project from the approved plan.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments:
This would make additional votes very likely. Here’s the results of the 2016 vote, compared with the boundaries of Senator O’Ban’s district. (The green areas at the bottom of the voting results map are the military bases in the southwest area of the district.)

Details:
Requires an independent audit when 80% of the voted funding has been used, and another vote if the audit concludes the original plan cannot be completed with the remaining original funding, as well as a vote for additions or deletions of projects, or for “significant” changes in scope.