Here’s a link to the “Influencing Olympia Effectively” (IOE) course, a good first step for anyone interested in becoming a conservative political activist:
https://www.influencingolympia.com/

For those uncomfortable with registering with the IOE website, or those already familiar with submitting input for statehouse committee consideration on pending bills (somewhat impactful), or with submitting comments on pending legislation after it moves out of committee (somewhat less impactful), the IOE group maintains a shareable spreadsheet of the status of all bills moving through the legislature.  These are two separate processes, the former being more impactful than the latter because the language of a bill is still subject to revision until it passes out of committee and heads to the floor in each chamber for a vote.  The spreadsheet is updated daily (usually) and offers a ready reference to bill status and links for each bill to provide input to Olympia, as well as IOE recommendations to support or oppose a bill.  You should be able to access the spreadsheet here without registering and doing the course.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HRk3KIb-a7k19wadeqbymuIvIEWuXeAm_uZyGPWDe8M/edit?usp=sharing
For anyone that wants to use the spreadsheet, I recommend bookmarking the link above and checking the spreadsheet daily to see which bills are at critical junctures (heading for committee hearings).

You’ll see the spreadsheet has a tab for each category of legislation.  The IOE group has recommended that larger and more organized groups consider forming a team for each tab, where a team/tab leader has strong interest or a background in that category of legislation.  Joyce (I think), the lady who talked about bills related to education, would be a good example of someone that could fill the role of team/tab leader.

If you want to get a better feel for the people behind IOE, Nancy Churchill also writes columns for local online “newspapers.”  Here’s a recent example, which should also provide a laugh:
https://www.thefourthcorner.com/dangerous-rhetorics-influencing-olympia-effectively-can-dems-end-unlimited-governor-power/

Her columns are also found at the links below:
https://www.ghweekly.com/blog/categories/dangerous-rhetoric

https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/tag/dangerous-rhetoric

To successfully register with the Olympia statehouse to provide input to committees, you have to register at least an hour or two before the scheduled hearing.  The process takes a little practice, but it’s not rocket science.  Writing a rationale for supporting or opposing a bill does require some grunt work in the form of reading the text of bills and the analysis done by the supposedly “non-partisan” staffers in each chamber.  But with so many bills moving through the legislature in this short session, time is of the essence.  When pressed for time, I just echo the recommendations of the IOE people and simply write, “I oppose this bill,” or the opposite.  When I’m able to register for input to a committee, I always read the bill and the analysis so I can provide a rationale for supporting or opposing a bill.  I often include a statement that there is no evidence in the text of a bill or in the analysis justifying the need for the legislation, and no information concerning the total cost of the legislation.  This relates to a question from last night, asking if bills are required to include language justifying their reason for being, and shows that most of the legislation lacks justification AND budgetary impact, thus making informed support impossible.  This typifies single party bill writing:  no need to justify or price out the impacts when everyone votes in lock-step and you have the majority.

The real key to influencing Olympia has to do with numbers.  Since Democrats control both chambers, and Governor Kingsley will sign anything that reaches his desk, the only avenue for influencing Olympia at this point in time is generating enough input via the process above to communicate to the Democrat majority.  This means flooding the zone to the point that most of the bad bills (i.e., unlawful, wasteful, or unnecessary) don’t see or survive a floor vote.  On that point, the bill to reign in the Governor’s emergency proclamation power is not likely to ever make it to the floor for a vote, along with any other bills sponsored by Republicans.  This is why all the progressive authoritarians think it’s wonderful to pass legislation that is unlawful, wasteful, or unnecessary when their team is in charge of the statehouse and the executive branch but consider it the end of the world when the tables are turned.  The whole value of divided government and checks and balances does not compute for progressives and many of their voters, who tend to consistently vote a certain way out of habit without carefully considering what state lawmakers are up to.

Bottom line:  We need to flood the statehouse zone with input until Republicans have a majority in either chamber of the statehouse or we elect a Republican governor.  Spreading the word about IOE encourages people to participate and educates more voters as to how at odds many of the bills passed by progressive Democrats are with the limited government constraints enshrined in both the US and state constitutions.  Please feel free to push the information in this email to everyone you know and encourage them to share it with everyone they know.  Feel free to simply forward as-is or copy, paste, edit, and re-use any of the text in your own separate email.

Mike S.
Seabeck