Inside the Capitol

As summer draws to an end we are starting to hear murmurs from Olympia. The primary has passed and although there were not many races that captured the “political-junkies” interest outside of the big cities there were some interesting results. Perhaps the most surprising was in Seattle with the incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels coming in third and not moving forward to the general election. The state seems to be settling in to the new “Top-Two” and earlier primary system that was so controversial and it now seems to be working well.

Legislators are looking forward to January and soon they will start filling interim hearings once a month with reports about how things they have done are working, how the budget is going, and new ideas they want to present in January. Monitoring those is a primary focus of a lobbyist’s attention as summer ends.

In the TRAW we have been listening to the concerns of our members and trying to come up with ideas of our own. We have held Legislative Committee meetings in Seattle, Moses Lake and Cle Elum and made listening to members thoughts and ideas at the Tow Show our first order of business.

The Tow Show was fantastic, the biggest in many years, and it was wonderful to see and chat with members from all over the State as well as folks from other states and Canada too. The banquet was great as well and Master of Ceremonies Al Runte commented in introducing me that I had been representing the interests of the towing industry for almost twenty years now. That brought back a flood of memories of issues we have worked on and the people who have given so much time and effort to make this association such a fixture in the halls of the Capitol.

Now we have legislators wanting to know our thoughts before they introduce legislation that might affect the industry and strong committee chairmen who will tell interest groups to work with us if they want their proposals to have any chance of moving forward. Agencies seek us out to be part of discussion or “stakeholder” groups on issues that we have concerns with and on critical issues like Major Incident Response we are considered as necessary, respected part of the “team” along with the WSDOT, the WSP and others.

We won’t always get what we want, but we will be in the thick of things both protecting our interests and moving forward our vision of an effective, professional, and profitable full service towing and recovery industry. Thank you all for your help in making this possible. It serves all our members well to be known and respected in the halls of the Legislature.