While Tea Parties and concerned citizens focus their energies on changing the dysfunctional legislative process that is the status quo in the other Washington, lawmakers in Olympia are ignoring widespread voter demands for transparency into the sausage mill of lawmaking. The State Senate is entertaining discussion about a bill – Senate Bill 6853 – that could have dramatic effects on state residents and business owners. What effects, you ask? Therein’s the rub, as the bill lacks all of the detailed language that would ordinarily be required to begin deliberation over its contents.

As reported Tuesday morning by the Washington Policy Center blog, SB 6853 was introduced without only a header naming the bill’s sponsors (an all-Democrat squad), the required statement of purpose – “creating the legislative review of tax preferences act of 2010” – and no enacting language.

“This bill may make major changes in the tax code, and could result in a significant increase in the tax burden state lawmakers place on citizens, so it would be nice to know what the bill actually says,” WPC vice president Paul Guppy writes. “[I]t is hard … to make a fair assessment of a major bill when the public has no idea what it says, or how it may affect our lives.”

The bill was also scheduled onto the Senate Ways and Means committee calendar for Tuesday’s 1:30 p.m. meeting at which time it could be moved quickly to a Senate vote bypassing the body’s own five-day sunshine rule. It also lacks a fiscal note containing dollars and cents associated with enactment.

TVW is scheduled to webcast the Ways and Means Committee meeting LIVE.

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