Missing Link bill dies after WA Senate committee decides not to take a vote

Well, it was worth a try. The WA Senate's Environment, Energy and Technology (ENET") Committee decided not to vote on the House bill to exempt the Ballard Missing Link (and maybe a small subset of other Seattle trail sections) from the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA"), the basis for the neverending court cases holding up completion of the Burke-Gilman Trail. By missing last week's cutoff deadline for bills to get a vote out a policy committee in the opposite chamber, the Missing Link bill is dead for the 2025 legislative session.

I liked the bill," said Senator Sharon Shewmake, Chair of the ENET Committee. I ran a broader bill last year to exempt bike trails from SEPA because I'm frustrated with how SEPA can be weaponized for reasons that have nothing to do with environmental impacts. Unfortunately, I had to make a leadership decision because I had a lot of members who were worried about the bill going forward." Specifically, Shewmake told Seattle Bike Blog that she heard from senators who were concerned that the bill would establish a precedent for supporters or managers of other projects stalled by the SEPA process to come to the legislature for exemptions. SEPA has stopped bad projects and successfully has mitigated impacts of other projects. There was a lot of concern that exempting one particular project sets a precedent that anyone who doesn't get what they want out of a SEPA process just come to the legislature."

Another concern was that the legislature was being asked to weigh in on a local Seattle problem that should be determined by Seattle politicians, not the folks on the committee (which did not include a single member from Seattle)," she said. This was a concern voiced mostly by Republican members of the committee during the hearing on the bill. I found this reasoning confusing since the local political decision was clearly made to build the Shilshole route of the trail, a position spanning multiple mayors and city councils. The SEPA abuse in this case is the state power that is overriding local decision making, not the proposed exemption bill. Even if the bill had passed into law, Seattle would still have all the power to decide where to build the trail.

This doesn't mean the Shilshole route for the Ballard Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail is dead, it just means the city and Cascade Bicycle Club need to win their appeals and any other legal proceedings that might follow. The SEPA exemption, had it passed, should have ended these legal battles without requiring much more legal fighting. It would have been like hitting an empty netter in a hockey game, to use a strained sports analogy. Hopefully they can win their remaining cases and clear the way for their construction permits before next session so there will be no need to run a similar bill in 2026.

The bill was not voted down, it just failed to get a Senate committee vote at all. Because the state legislature is usually only in session for a couple months, they follow a cutoff calendar that is established ahead of time to act something like checkpoints. In order for a bill to make it through both chambers and into law, it must stay ahead of these checkpoints, to use another strained sports analogy.

In the case of HB 1814, the bill passed the House 69-27, then had a hearing in the Senate ENET Committee that we reported about. It was put on the committee's agenda two times along with a bunch of other bills, but the committee decided to skip voting on it both times. The bill was read into the committee's agenda on April 1, and committee staff mentioned a new proposed amendment from Chair Shewmake to be discussed, but when it was time for a discussion and vote she simply said, We are skipping 1814." This is a common way that bills die during the session, though 1814 at least got on the agenda suggesting it was close. Chair Shewmake's never-discussed amendment also suggests she was still trying to finagle it to get the votes until the last minute. Assuming the four Republicans (Boehnke, Harris, MacEwen, Short) on the eleven-member committee intended to vote no, as it seemed during the public hearing, the bill could only afford to lose one of its seven Democrats (Dhingra, Liias, Lovelett, Ramos, Shremake, Slatter, Wellman). So while we didn't get a public vote, we can guess that at least two of the Democrats signaled they would be a NAY vote.

Among the other bills left to languish in the legislature last week was HB 1402, which would have made make it an unfair practice" to require a driver's license in a job listing unless the position includes functions that require a driver's license. Listing a driver's license as a requirement for non-driving jobs is a depressingly common practice that discriminates against people with disabilities that prevent them from passing a driver's test. It passed the House 55-41 but failed to get a vote in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee. It is a great bill, and I hope it comes back next year. UPDATE: Happily, I got this wrong! There was a very similar bill in the Senate, SB 5501, that has now passed in the House. So the Senate only chose not to act on the House bill because they had already passed their own version. The bill should soon be on its way to Governor's desk for a signature.

SB 5595 to allow for the creation of shared streets was passed out of the House Transportation Committee April 7, one day ahead of its cutoff date. House fiscal committees" such as Transportation, the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Transportation Committee are given an extra week (April 8 this year) to take action on bills from the opposite chamber.

Bills still need to get floor votes in their second chamber by the April 16 cutoff, then if there were amendments in the second chamber, those differences need to get resolved until both chambers have approved the same version. Only then can the bills be sent to the Governor to be signed into law. Meanwhile, the budget process usually takes over most of the remaining attention until the end of the session, scheduled for April 27.

So yes, HB 1814 failing to pass is another narrow defeat for the Missing Link. But at least this time, the battle was on positive terrain. Nearly every legal decision to this point, good or bad, has happened in cases where any decision other than dismissal would be bad news for the trail. Trail advocates had everything to lose and nothing to gain. This time, nothing negative has happened, the trail just doesn't get to skip past its ongoing court case. It's frustrating to lose, sure, but it was nice to see trail advocates on the offensive for once. Opponents have shown a willingness to exploit any and all opportunities to impede the trail, so advocates should be willing to respond likewise.

Sen. Shewmake said she is not finished exploring ways in future sessions to keep SEPA strong while reducing abuse of the process. I'm going to spend the interim learning more about SEPA and working with members about ways to reform SEPA," she said. Lawmakers will need to be very careful about how they carve out exemptions without accidentally weakening to whole law because, as we have seen, lawyers can be very good at finding loopholes or technicalities to make the law work for their clients. I don't know if it's possible to make any process immune to abuse, but I think the Burke-Gilman should be an example of how the process is weaponized."