The curtain goes up in Olympia

Student restraint, new powers for the AG, foreign political money, and strip mall housing, plus some takeaways from the legislative preview

Lawmakers head back to the capital today where a billion-dollar budget hole awaits them. Short on cash and time, they’ll be hard-pressed to pass any pricey ideas. Despite the stage metaphor in the headline, we’re going to skip the community-theater pomp and circumstance and zero in on the bills up for early hearings in the first inning.

Student restraint and isolation

One of last year’s thorniest issues resurfaces on Day 1 as the House Education Committee takes up Rep. Lisa Callan’s bill to severely restrict the use of restraint and isolation as tools for dealing with disruptive kids in school. We went deep on this issue last year before the bill died in House Appropriations. This year we’re throwing Rowan the Intern into the deep end.

New powers for the AG’s office

Also up for an early hearing is a bill from Rep. Edwin Obras to open new doors for state Attorney General Nick Brown’s office to raid businesses under criminal investigation. Search warrants would be needed to unlock said doors. Records would be the only items they could take with them. The proposal, which was written at Brown’s behest, keeps guns and handcuffs out of the equation. Expect some raised eyebrows among the business community when the House Committee on Community Safety runs the idea by its members.

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