OLYMPIA — A bipartisan riparian buffer bill supported by farm groups and many tribes but opposed by Gov. Jay Inslee has failed to get out of the House Capital Budget Committee.

By stalling without being brought up for a vote, House Bill 1720 fell victim to the Wednesday deadline for bills to move from the committee. Lawmakers could still fund habitat projects in the budget, though the groundbreaking voluntary program that would have been created by the bill appears to be dead.

Before Wednesday, the bill enjoyed rare bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans on the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

“It just doesn’t happen very often around here,” said Moses Lake Rep. Tom Dent, the committee’s top-ranking Republican. “We were on a roll.

“We have an extraordinary amount of support, but we have a handful of folks who weren’t there,” he said. 

Inslee administration officials criticized the bill for not setting minimum standards for buffers and for leaving state agencies off a task force that would have monitored the program.

“We opposed the bill because we believe the funding needs to be accounted for with minimum standards and that our agencies need involvement in future policy work,” Inslee spokesman Mike Faulk said in an email.

Faulk said the governor was open to increasing funding for riparian habitat restoration, even without a bill. “We could still hopefully have a riparian program on the ground this year,” he said.

HB 1720 proposed an infusion of money — legislators talked about $200 million — to pay for planting buffers and compensating farmers who voluntarily took land out of production.

Farmers, tribes and conservation districts could have planned site-specific buffers rather than following uniform standards that could require buffers hundreds of feet wide.

Inslee last year proposed to mandate buffers on farmland. The bill went nowhere. The governor came back this year proposing a voluntary program, but with the possibility of future regulations. Again, his proposal went nowhere.

Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Okanogan County, said the governor’s office continued to push for rigid standards and the involvement of state agencies.

“They preferred the regulatory approach,” he said. “The point of this bill was that it was more of a grass-roots effort.”

Washington State Dairy Federation policy director Jay Gordon said he was disappointed the bill failed. The bill would have eased the long battle over standardized buffers, he said.

“That part we’ve been hung up on way too long,” he said.

“It was pretty cool to see a bunch of folks line up and say ‘yes,’ to this,” Gordon said. “If we get no bill, no funding, no action, that would not be good.”