Wolf, methane, overtime bills fail in Washington

Published 12:03 pm Monday, February 24, 2025

OLYMPIA — A bill that would have required Washington dairies and feedlots to report methane emissions is among the agriculture-related bills that have fallen by the wayside.

House Bill 1630 failed to meet a Feb. 21 deadline to pass from at least one committee. The deadline winnows out bills with too little support to pass the Legislature this year.

Wolf-related bills also were discarded, including one that would have allowed ranchers to shoot the first wolf that returned to a carcass.

A proposal to amend the state’s overtime law for agriculture did not receive a hearing in the Senate or House.

Here is a rundown of bills, dead and alive. First the dead:

HB 1630: Rep. LIsa Parshley, D-Olympia, said she introduced the bill to get data on how much cows contribute to climate change. To what end, the bill didn’t say and Parshley wasn’t specific. Scientists testified it is difficult, if not impossible, for a dairy or feedlot to accurately measure methane emissions.

Senate Bill 5590: Sen. Keith Wagoner, R-Sedro-Woolley, said shooting the first wolf back to a carcass would do more to change a pack’s behavior than letting time pass and then randomly shooting a wolf from a helicopter. He said it was common sense, but wolf advocates opposed it.

Senate Bill 5354: Sen. Shelly Short, R-Addy, proposed allowing wolf-saturated counties to participate in managing wolves. Again, wolf advocates testified ‘no.” The Department of Fish and Wildlife didn’t outright oppose the bill, but said it would take a long time to write county-level wolf plans.

Senate Bill 5487 and House Bill 1597 would have raised the overtime threshold to 50 hours for 12 weeks chosen by a farm. Farm groups argue the 40-hour, year-round threshold hurts farms and farmworkers. Loosening the overtime law for agriculture was a non-starter for Democrats.

Alive:

House Bill 1141 would allow employees of cannabis growers to form unions with collective-bargaining rights. It passed the House Labor and Workplace Standards and has strong support from majority Democrats. The bill is widely seen as the precursor to bills in future years to give all farmworkers collective-bargaining rights.

House Bill 1912: The bill takes a run at shielding farmers from cap-and-trade taxes. Farmers could get refunds if they paid taxes at the point of sale. The Washington Farm Bureau would rather farmers not have to pay the tax in the first place. The House Environment and Energy Committee passed the bill to keep it alive, but even the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, acknowledges it needs work.

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