January 24, 2012
What a week! We celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday with speeches from several representatives honoring his memory and accomplishments with floor speeches. That was followed by a fairly normal afternoon filled with many meetings with groups who use the holiday for their “legislative day” to bring people to the Capitol to meet with legislators. Hearings also occupied the afternoon.
Tuesday saw a light snow hit the area and reduce citizen attendance at hearings as people avoided driving in light snow. It was pretty much business as usual. Little did we know what was coming! Some of us wondered if the weather forecast was crying wolf by predicting an approaching big storm. We went to bed Tuesday night and everything looked pretty normal.
Whoa! Wednesday morning we looked out our windows and saw lots of snow. Schools and many businesses were closed. But the legislature was in session, and I drove to the Legislative Building through a winter wonderland. I-5 was covered in compact snow and looked like wasteland, only one car was visible in front of me. I was scheduled to chair an 8:00 AM State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee that began with a work session on tribes’ contributions to the state economy. Since the tribal leaders had come to town Tuesday, we had probably the only full hearing room on campus. Only one of the seven committee members was unable to make it through the weather. And the snow kept falling.
Most of my Wednesday afternoon constituent meetings were cancelled because people wisely decided not to test the roadways. By the time we got to our regular 3:30 Ways and Means Committee meeting, some of the members who had managed to make it to Olympia wanted to head home before dark. All evening events and meetings were cancelled, as were Thursday’s 8:00 AM hearings.
The Capitol Campus was beautiful and a great place to take photos, a rare time to see it under a real blanket of snow. The ledge outside my office on the fourth floor of the Legislative Building measured 14” of snow. And trees were bending under the weight of all the snow. Several of the large evergreens were surrounded with yellow tape as their limbs drooped to the ground under the snow’s weight. The Winged Victory statue’s soldiers’ hats were turned into snow-covered top hats. And then the freezing rain came!
It was obvious much would not happen Thursday afternoon, and since my house has a gently sloping roof, I enlisted my son and daughter, and headed home to climb up and remove the snow. We shoveled and pushed for four hours and created a wall of snow around the house. Of course, when I arrived home Thursday afternoon, there was no electricity. Our friends who could not get home because fallen trees blocked their road, gathered firewood and built a fire in the fireplace. We spent an evening in the dark playing pinochle by the firelight.
Friday morning I found getting to Legislative Building a challenge. Sid Snyder Drive was closed at Capitol Way because of fallen branches. The diagonal drive was closed at the Winged Victory statue due to broken limbs. So it was back to Capitol Way to a detour route through the South Capitol neighborhood to get to my parking spot. The fallen trees make the campus look like a war zone, limbs cover the ground around most trees. The beautiful Japanese cherry trees by the House and Senate office buildings are cluttered with hanging limbs. Like most of the area, it will take weeks to clean up the mess and repair the damage. I fear some of the historic trees are lost.
At 11:30 AM the power on the campus went out; and we had a couple meetings in the dark until the emergency generator kicked in. Now afternoon meetings were in danger because we could not record or have a sound system working in the hearing rooms. About 1:15 PM power was restored. We managed to hold an Education Committee hearing where bills to address education assistance for low performing schools and students and yet another proposal for charter schools were on the agenda.
OK, here is the amazing part of the story. I drove around the campus Saturday afternoon and all but one small corner had been cleaned by the Department of Enterprise Services’ Buildings and Grounds crew. Except for places where limbs had been sawed off and some small branches, leaves, and needles, one would not know of the havoc winter had brought. A very special thanks to these dedicated state employees who spent extra hours in horrible weather to perform this miraculous task!
Much work time was lost, and now we will pay the price with extra committee meetings every evening this week. It again makes me wonder if we really benefit with the 60 day limit for session. We rush to cram in too much work with too little time to give many proposals the consideration they need. And we lost time working on the budget. So pressure only increases as we push to get everything done.
All in all, it was a most interesting week.