Legislative Report from June

There have been some questions about the process the Legislative Committee is going through to develop the Legislative Agenda for the 2009 session of the legislature. Below is the Legislative Report I sent out in June asking for input from the membership:


Legislative Report

Since the Legislature is not in session and legislators are focused on running for re-election, all of the activity is at the “Agency Level” in working on problems with WAC rules and preparing for the next session in January.

The Association is working in several areas. First, there is a proposed set of National recommendations for the so-called “NUG” or National Unified Goal regarding Incident Response and Management. A work group of the TRAW led by Rich Steele who sits on the Board of the local Washington State “NUG” committee went over all the draft language on a conference call and submitted comments reflecting the programs we have implemented here to bring towers into the co-ordination of Incident Response and suggestions for improvements that might be considered for the final draft.

Additionally, the TRAW is working with the Department of Licensing and the Washington State Patrol on an issue that was brought to our attention by members regarding the legal ability of RTTO’s to deal with hulk vehicles. There are differences of opinion as to how these should be handled and whether a Hulk Hauler license is needed, but both the WSP and DOL want to work with us to come up with an interim solution pending a “fix” in January that may well be in the tiered licensing system that we have suggested that would clarify that RTTO’s under one plate could do all the various tasks of handling motor vehicles while at the same time regulating and inspecting Non-RTTO’s.

Now is the time as well for members to be referring to the Legislative Committee any ideas and problems they have had for consideration regarding our proposed Legislative Agenda for the 2009 session. There is a lot of preparation that needs to be done for any proposed change in the law and suggestions made close to, or during the session would have to wait a year.