The Sunday Observer: The mysterious death of House Bill 1099

A priority bill for Democrats dies. They blame Republicans, but who really dunnit?

I invoke the little nerd/geek icon from the “…for Dummies” books for this one because we’re going to get down in the weeds about two of the nerdiest/geekiest topics imaginable — the Growth Management Act and legislative procedure.

I’m a little nervous about copping this one. The Dummies empire probably employs some brawling sharks as copyright lawyers. But it’s totally fair use.

At the late-night press conference after the gavel fell on the Washington Legislature’s 2022 session around midnight on Thursday, our sisters and brothers in news¹ had several questions about the unexpected death of House Bill 1099, an important but deeply wonky proposal to revise the Growth Management Act to address climate change. After a somewhat tortured path, a negotiated compromise version of the bill had passed the Senate, only to die in the House without a final vote.

House Speaker Laurie Jinkins was quick to blame minority Republicans, who were signaling they were up for more of the clock management tactics we wrote about a few weeks back. In reality, this was a failure of Democrats’ own making. We’ll get back to that in a bit. First, the backstory: