Washington State Republicans say legislation heard yesterday in the state Senate threatens the state’s agricultural community and exports. It’s a bill that would place a number of restrictions on pesticides, proposed by Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a Democrat from downtown Seattle. SB 6397 had a public hearing in a Senate committee, but it wasn’t the Agriculture Committee and it wasn’t the Health Committee, it was the Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee.
Among other things, the bill would prohibit someone from applying pesticide that may drift more than half a mile and give both the Departments of Labor and Industries and Health the authority to enforce violations of the law with penalties of $10,000 for each violation.
Yakima Senator Curtis King says running the bill through Labor and Commerce is nothing more than an attempt to bypass the Senate Ag Committee, where he’s more confident that the bill wouldn’t get anywhere.
King’s Republican colleage, Senator Jim Honeyford of Sunnyside, says he’s getting tired of waiting to address the virtually unmentioned billion dollar budget problem that hasn’t been touched since the special session in December last year.
