A message from Rep. Brad Hawkins | March 21, 2013

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Hello from Olympia, where we are in the tenth week of the 2013 legislative session. Having just passed a major cutoff point in the session, I wanted to share some video clips on House Chamber floor action.

House Bill 1252 moves through the legislative process

In this clip, I offer an amendment on House Bill 1252 and am speaking on the adoption of the amendment. The original bill, which I cosponsored, would establish a K-12 online professional development project to make online professional development modules for teachers and principals available on demand and at no cost to any educator who chooses to use them.

Prior to the House vote on the bill, some of my colleagues expressed interest in having evaluations at the end of each online course. Without the evaluations, many of my colleagues would likely vote against the bill, even though they liked our original concept. I worked closely with the Democratic sponsor of the bill, the Vice-Chair of the House Education Committee, to craft an acceptable amendment. My House floor amendment was adopted and incorporated into the bill.

I then spoke on final passage of the bill, to encourage other members to vote in favor of the legislation. As I mentioned in my floor speech, the willingness of legislators to come together to agree on a bipartisan amendment made the bill better and resulted in a very good outcome. HB 1252 passed by a margin of 92-5. This shows what can be done when both sides are willing to work together! Watch the final passage here.

The entire floor action on HB 1252 can be viewed here.

The remainder of the 2013 legislative session

In the coming weeks, we move back into our policy committees to hear the bills passed by the Senate. I am interested to begin hearing the bills passed from the Senate’s newly formed Majority Coalition Caucus. I’ll keep you updated in the coming weeks.

Thank you for the opportunity to represent you here in Olympia!

Sincerely,