In Our View: It’s Raining Bills

Catch them, CliffNotes style

The 60th Washington Legislature convened on Jan. 8. By the end of the first week, 427 bills were already in play.

Its hard to be an informed citizen, to follow or weigh in on legislation when bills are falling like snowflakes. And spending an evening reading the full text of a bill is enough to send even a civic-minded citizen back to reality television. Newspaper reporters and editorial writers pick and choose proposed laws that they think are most important to readers and track them throughout the session. But what if youre more into energy alternatives than capital budgets? More passionate about the nuances in abortion law than health care? What if education issues put you to sleep but you cant get enough information about Internet gambling, rainwater collection or hunting regulations?

Then Washington Votes might be for you. Weve praised the service before and cant resist yahooing it again. The free-to-use Web site (www.washingtonvotes.org), run by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Washington Policy Center, allows you to search for bills by keyword, bill number or category. When you find legislation you want to keep a close eye on, you can sign up to get e-mails that update you when your bills meet action. The Web site breaks down each vote in plain talk. Consider it the CliffsNotes of the state legislative world. And the site always offers a link to the full text of a bill, in case you need more.

Using www.washingtonvotes.org, you can even follow your representatives and see how they vote on your pet peeves and political passions. And Washington Votes doesnt stop with what lawmakers do, it also exposes what politicians dont do. At the end of the 105-day session, Washington Votes will publish a Missed Votes Report. There you can find out if your lawmaker was a good steward of time or whether he or she was skipping floor action on your dime.

A recent press release from Washington Votes said the site tracked all 4,210 bills, 4,069 amendments and substitutes, and 876 new laws in the 2005-2006 biennium. It tracked every roll call vote cast by every legislator. And the site received more than 1.1 million visits for the session.

The sites popularity makes sense. Washington Votes offers clear, concise summaries of bills and where they are in the process, making it even handier than official legislative Web sites. Bookmark www.washingtonvotes.org as one of your favorite sites and become a more informed Washingtonian without a lot of work and without having to weed through a lot of legislative babble.

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