The Legislative Process for Chiropractic in 2007

Why do we keep asking you and your patients to call?

The process of creating and running a bill is a rather lengthy one, and one that is almost set-up to fail. The bill has to pass with a majority vote through both Houses of the legislature, and then be signed by the Governor. Each phase of the process brings its unique challenges, different issues to address, as well as the obvious politics of each stage. To be eligible for floor consideration in each House, bills must pass through various committees before consideration by the whole body. At each stop in the process, a bill must obtain enough votes to pass that stage to be eligible to move on in the legislative process. At any point in the process, the bill could be set aside, struck down by enough opposing votes, amended to completely change its intent, or simply miss a deadline because it wasn't a priority.

Our Bills, which started out as HB 1630 and 1631, as well as their companion bills (the exact same legislation in the opposite House), SB 5596 and 5597 were all filed in January. The reason we ran the same bills in the 2 houses at the same time is that often times a bill will be "killed" in a committee in one house, but could be going through the process fine in the other house. Then when it comes over to the opposite house, hopefully by that point, there is enough support on it that it will pass.

The chairperson of the House Health Care Committee, Rep. Eileen Cody told us early on that since our bills died last year in the Senate that they needed to start there first and then she would help us get a hearing in the House. So this is exactly what we did. We introduced both House and Senate bills to get the process moving but focused our appointments with Senators and legislative staff to the necessary committees.

February 12, 2007: In public testimony in the Senate Health and Long Term Care committee, your Executive Director and Lobbyist, Lori Bielinski, set the background of our bills and their history, and Drs. David Butters and Austin McMillin justified the reasons for the bills.

After a vote of 7-yea, 2-with no recommendation, our bill was then referred to the Ways and Means Committee (the Money Committee) to address claims made in the fiscal notes issued by the Washington State Health Care Authority. Any bill that has a fiscal impact to the state, determined by the state agency affected, must have a hearing in the fiscal committee. In the Senate, that committee is Ways and Means, and in the House it is Appropriations. Keep in mind that at any time the chair of any committee can refuse to hear our bills, and they would then be dead.

However, we made sure to work on getting information out about our bills to the right people at the right times – this means calling and visiting with legislators, their staff, committee staff, scheduling staff, creating handouts with more current information, and keeping our own membership informed so that you also could put pressure on your elected representatives to support your bills.

February 28, 2007: Both SSB 5596 and 5597 received a public hearing in the Senate Ways and Means Committee. The insurers and business continued to confuse legislators with phrases like "any willing provider" type of legislation, and that these bills would cost them, and the state, an overwhelming amount of money (to treat you the same as other providers?).

March 5, 2007: On the scheduled fiscal cut-off day SSB 5597 was moved out of the Ways and Means Committee with a majority "do pass" recommendation with a bi-partisan vote and was referred to the Rules Committee. SSB 5596 did not pass out of the Ways and Means committee, and those issues will be considered in different methods after the legislative session, or in the 2008 session.

Rules committee is where leadership and other Senate members make recommendation to have the entire body consider the bill on the Senate Floor for passage. Bills require 2 Rules "pulls" before the bill is eligible for the floor calendar.

March 8, 2007: Our bill was moved out and was heard on the Senate Floor. There were several amendments proposed by our opposition, on the floor, but all were struck down by those who supported us. The bill was finally passed with at 39-Yea, 10-Nay vote and sent to the House for its consideration.

March 15, 2007: Now in the opposite House, our bill was referred to the House Health Care and Wellness committee where a hearing was held on the only bill left moving, SSB 5597. The chair of the committee agreed to several changes we wanted to clarify the bill and to address the concerns in the Senate that we could accept without diluting the entire bill. By now our arguments, and language changes, reduced the initial $22 million fiscal note by the Health Care Authority to a dramatically less amount of $6 million, which we still believe is an over-inflated number and one that we continued to challenge.

March 28, 2007: The House Appropriations hearing delivered the largest amount of opposition to date now that the Director of the Health Care Authority, Steve Hill, has decided to testify against our bill, and has also encouraged the Puget Sound Health Alliance to oppose us also. In addition to this strong opposition, the Association of Washington Business has now listed YOUR BILLS, on their "job killer" list and encouraged the business community to act in concert in opposition to SSB 5597.

These organizations have a great deal more money than the WSCA and they have multiple lobbyists working against us at any time. WSCA has one lobbyist and one in training. It is truly amazing that our bill continues to move through the process, and be supported in a bipartisan way, and remain in the process at this stage.

April 24, 2007: As of this moment, our bill is sitting on the Governor's desk and awaiting signature. Since our bill was passed during session, she has 21 days to take action on it. If no action is taken, then after 90 days it becomes a law. The actions that she could take on it is to veto, partial veto (cross out sections that she does not agree with), or sign it as is. We want Governor Gregoire to sign E2SSB 5597 as it passed. Any other type of veto could potentially render the bill ineffective.

Current Status: On May 10th, we learned that the bill was not going to be signed Friday May 11th, as had been previously scheduled.

The Governor is having concerns with our bill and wanted to have her policy staff meet with us to discuss possible options. The Governor can sign or veto bills up until Tuesday, so we will know for sure at that time. We have done all that we can to this point and have had very strong support from legislators who have been involved with our bill process this year.

¹ The reason a bill starts as a "SB " is that it is a Senate Bill. When it becomes a SSB, it has been modified with a substitute draft of language and is now referenced as a "substitute Senate bill." When there is a number included before the letters, it identifies that the substitutions have occurred more than once. When there is an "E" before the bill number, it is identified as "Engrossed" and means that the bill has been modified in both houses, many times, with substitute language.