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This Week in Olympia: Legislative Assembly Days

Legislators return to Olympia this week for committee assembly days. Director of State Relations Margaret Shepherd will be presenting before the Higher Education Committee to give an update on the impact of tuition increases and financial aid.

The regular session of the State Legislature is scheduled to begin on January 14, 2013 and end on April 28, 2013.

To see what committees are meeting this week and watch the proceedings, visit TVW’s programming guide:

Earlier this week, Senate Democrats released their leadership team and committee chair proposal. Some observers still predict that a “philosophical coalition,” could emerge around budget and government reform issues, changing the dynamics of Senate control.

In that scenario, Sens. Rodney Tom (D-Medina) and Tim Sheldon (D-Potlach) might decide to buck their caucus, and opt to work with Senate Republicans to broker an alternative governance proposal.

More reporting on that from The Olympian:

Democrats will have a slim 26-23 majority if preliminary election results hold up, giving major leverage to Republicans and middle-of-the-road Democrats.

 

But Democrats made several overtures to their more conservative wing and to the GOP. They offered to create a new bipartisan committee to deal with school-funding issues, to give Republicans their strongest hand in other committees that the minority party might ever have seen, and to give maverick Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, a plum post as president pro tem.

 

Seattle Sen. Ed Murray, newly elected by Democrats as majority leader to replace retiring Sen. Lisa Brown, has asked Republicans to negotiate ahead of the session that starts in January.

Senate Republicans meet today to select their new leaders. We’ll keep you posted if any noteworthy developments occur on this front.

Finally, Gov.-Elect Jay Inslee’s transition team continues to ramp up. A roster of key leadership was released this week:

http://twitter.com/Herald_Politics/status/273849557509627905

A repository for resumes has also been established for those interested in serving in the Inslee Administration: