Good for you, Jeanne

Though I live in Washington’s 43rd Legislative District, I have strong ties to my western neighbor LD, the Thundering 36th.  I was very pleased, then, to see a familiar name in this morning’s Stateside Dispatch, an online publication by the Progressive States Network.  The PSN is sponsoring a nationwide teleconference this afternoon, on the subject of Universal and Affordable Broadband in the States, and one of the invited speakers on the panel is 36th District State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles.

Senator Kohl-Welles is the principal sponsor of SB 5120 in the current session of the state legislature.  That bill is currently before the Senate Committee on Water and Energy & Telecommunications, and has been referred to Ways & Means for further action.  The header of SB 5120 reads:

Requiring a survey of the deployment of broadband technologies among households in the state to encourage cost-effectiveness and identify factors preventing widespread availability.

Until I received that Stateside Dispatch email, I had no idea that such a proposal was in the Washington legislative agenda for this year.  That Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a staunch progressive and a forward-thinking legislator, is behind the effort to increase the availability of affordable broadband throughout the state comes as no surprise (nor, for that matter, is it unexpected that my friend Derek Kilmer is a co-sponsor of the bill).  It’s interesting, however, that two of the eight senators listed as sponsors are Republicans.  As far as I can tell, there is no companion bill before the state House of Representatives, but it’s possible that a Senate-passed bill can go before the House anyway; my knowledge of the nuts-and-bolts of the Washington legislative process is, shall we say, sketchy.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to listen in on the conference call, which will begin just about an hour after this post goes up on the blog.  If any reader is interested, and if it’s earlier than 1pm Pacific when you read this (with my meager readership, there’s not much chance of that...), you can sign up for the hour-long teleconference by clicking on this link. 

Comments

Yes, we humble party hacks are kinda proud of Jeanne. And Helen, and Mary Lou as well.

36-1394

<< Back to main