A measure to institute reforms at Jay Inslee’s Department of Corrections was approved by the Senate Law and Justice committee. SB-5294 creates an independent ombudsman to serve as a watchdog over the department following the scandal involving the early release 2,700 criminals of which at least two committed murders while they should have been behind bars.

Dino Rossi (R-45) is standing up to Sound Transit as he vocalizes his opposition to the light rail in the Senate. Pledging to fight against anything that is slowing down traffic. “What the state is doing is purposefully making the traffic so bad and congestion so bad, that they’re stealing our time and selling it to somebody else.”

A bill making it easier to hit law-enforcement officers who use deadly force with criminal charges has passed through a key committee in the Senate on Thursday. SB 5073 seeks to change the current law, which protects officers from conviction if they have acted in good faith and without malice when using deadly force, to re-define “good faith” and remove “malice.” It also allocates money to officer training, community outreach and data collection on relevant incidents.

The House Democrats still haven’t passed a tax bill to pay for their education “plan” – which is really just a wish list to Santa at this point. Sen. Dino Rossi (R-45) called on them to release details:

Washington’s total union membership has risen to 17.4% since 2015, where it sat at 16.8%. The rise appears to be driven from the public sector, as 54% of the public sector was unionized in 2016 – a rise from the 46.1% unionized in 2015 – whereas the private sector is down one percentage point from 11% of the private sector being unionized in 2015. TL;DR? Washington has the 5th highest overall unionization rate in the nation.

Sewage plant damage in Discovery Park is catastrophic, according to officials. 50 million gallons of raw sewage was being dumped into Puget Sound every day after a storm on February 9th left the pump station damaged. The damage is in the tens of millions of dollars. Apparently the dumping was stopped sometime yesterday but it is likely to start again as soon as the rain returns.

Executives from the scandal-ridden Port of Seattle are returning their combined $4.8 million in bonuses after a list of payouts were made public and revealed a massive exploitation of tax dollars. On top of salaries that are already in the six-digits, from $177-$233,000, executives were receiving bonuses that ranged from $12,400 to $16,300. The bonuses were not tied to any type of performance standards or by meeting goals set.

Sen. Ann Rivers (R-18) introduced legislation that would officially name Bigfoot the official state cryptid. Before you get upset about priorities of government, the genesis of SB 5816 came from a second-grader in Ridgefield who sent an impassioned letter to the senator. Rivers noted that, “Anything I can do to get young people interested and engaged in governmental systems, I’m going to be about.”