Audubon Priorities for the 2025 Washington State Legislative Session
Next year’s regular legislative session in Olympia begins Monday, January 13, 2025, and will run 105 days to April 27, longer if necessary. Sessions in odd-numbered years are 105 days versus 60 days in even-numbered years, allowing time for writing the state’s bi-annual budgets (Operating, Capital, and Transportation). Before and during the session, the Legislature’s website (https://leg.wa.gov/) is the place to read about the complicated legislative process, find the number of your district, the names and committee memberships of your two representatives and state senator, and much else you might like to know.
As a member of the Environmental Priorities Coalition, Audubon Washington works with 26 other coalition members to choose a few bills on which to focus during the legislative session. Watch this website for information about the 2025 priorities, which should appear sometime in December: Environmental Priorities Coalition 2024 priorities, Partnership Agenda - Washington Conservation Action. In recent years Audubon Washington has had a few additional priorities of its own. For a preliminary look, go to Audubon Washington’s 2025 Legislative Priorities | Audubon Washington. With more local chapters (25) than any other conservation group in Washington (Washington Chapter Network | Audubon Washington), spread across the state, Audubon has the power of constituency. Elected officials pay most attention to people living in their own districts. Whether you visit, call, send a letter, or email your legislator, know that they, by and large, do want to hear from you and will be influenced by what you say. When specifics on legislative priorities become available, please be an active citizen on behalf of birds and the environment in our state by contacting your legislators as often as possible.
Climate Commitment Act
As has been well-publicized, the work of many Audubon members and members of hundreds of other groups defeated ballot initiative 2117 and kept the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) intact. In the entire U.S., only California and Washington State have programs such as the CCA, which established a cap on carbon emissions from the largest emitters by requiring purchase of allowances. Progressively fewer and more expensive allowances create an incentive to devise the best means for each to reduce the greenhouse gases they emit. The CCA caps emissions at 45 percent of the 1990 level by 2030. The limit decreases over time until the state reaches net-zero emissions by 2050, a mandatory goal set by legislation.
That over 62% of voters in the recent election chose to keep the CCA signals other states that this approach has broad public support. Economists see this cap-and-invest system as an effective way to efficiently and quickly reduce carbon emissions. And CCA revenue is funding a wide range of projects and programs to reduce emissions and deal with the effects of climate change across the state. See previous issues of this newsletter and the conservation notes on the Skagit Audubon website for more about the CCA and relevant website links. Thank you to all who worked on this important Audubon Washington priority. The national election outcome suggests that action on climate change at the state and local level will be even more important in the years ahead.
Updating City and County Comprehensive Plans
At this writing in mid-November, we’re reviewing the drafts of the Environmental Element and the newly required Climate Element for the update of Skagit County’s Comprehensive Plan. See previous issues of the Skagit Flyer and the Conservation Notes on the Skagit Audubon website for background on this issue. The deadline for review comments on these elements of the plan is November 22nd, but there will be additional comment opportunities before the update is completed later in 2025. Our County Commissioners need to hear that we want Skagit County to make a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare our county for resilience in the face of climate change. The Skagit County Planning and Development Services website on the Comp Plan update has drafts of all the element updates and much more: https://www.skagitcounty.net/Departments/PlanningAndPermit/2025CPA.htm. Note that Skagit’s towns and cities and adjacent counties are also updating their Comp Plans. Each has public comment opportunities.
For information on other conservation issues Skagit Audubon is following, please go to the Conservation Notes on the chapter website at https://www.skagitaudubon.org/conservation-notes-letters.