The last two weeks in Olympia have been interesting — maybe even dramatic. The week before last was all about pushing back on the “Tech Giants” burst into the room (figuratively) with a letter supporting SB 5600, a clumsy rewrite of tenant-landlord law. Last week, I started out with a take down of the irresponsible Losing Home report. By the middle of the week, we had taken on the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (the Commission) at the House Housing, Community Development & Veterans Committee. The controversy at the Committee was over three bills, HB 1982, HB 2010 and HB 2011. The last two bills would require the Commission to consider changes and become more transparent. The first is to allow a small discount on water access for affordable and Farmworker housing projects in rural areas.

I’ve been testifying in front of legislative committees in Olympia for 25 years. That’s not bragging, just some context to what happened last week. I’m used to some drama in Committee meetings and being part of it. But many people thought the form of the proceedings of the last committee meeting were, well, unusual. You can watch for yourself how things unfolded.

But what’s the substance? The first bill, HB 1982, would give a small discount on water permits to housing projects in rural areas. We supported this legislation last year, and I was pleased to speak on its behalf again. The Chair, Representative Cindy Ryu, at first, seemed interested in the details of the bill, wondering if it could be modified or changed. By the time various people had spoken, she had completely changed her mind. She then proceeded to deliver a lecture (her word) about how I had drafted the language and title too narrowly and in a way that would “gut” the Hirst decision, a controversial rural water law suit that held up the capital budget in 2017.

Well, I didn’t draft the bill. And I am pretty confident that the bill, a modest waiving of a fee, had absolutely no impact on the Hirst decision. She said that she was persuaded to kill the bill, right there in the Committee (something not all that common; usually bills die when they don’t get voted out of committee) by the comments by others who opposed the bill. But they all talked about the loss of fee revenue. Not one of them mentioned Hirst. My intuition tells me that a message was delivered, somehow, from the Speaker of the House, Frank Chopp, that the bill should die. Right now! The only other person I’ve heard mentioned how much money the Hirst decision cost the state in delay was the Speaker. He used the same exact language in a frank (no pun intended) discussion I had with him last year about housing costs, Hirst, and whether he is Mayor of Seattle. Who knows? But it was, after watching the video, very bizarre.

The second bill, HB 2010, is based on the recommendations of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) encouraging more for-profit developer participation in the 9 percent Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. To keep it simple, the LIHTC program provides a subsidy to qualifying non-profit projects. Strictly speaking, for-profits can participate in that program, which provides more money than the 4 percent program. Why don’t they? That’s a question that HB 2010 intends to get at and to solve.

But if you watch the video at about 37:37 Representative Andrew Barkis gets irritated at the comment made by Kim Herman, Director of the Commission. Herman suggested that the legislature had better things to do with its time that make the Commission ask and answer this question. This didn’t sit well with Barkis and provided another flash of tension in the meeting. It’s pretty clear that Herman, as experienced as he is in managing the legislative process, let slip the fact that he doesn’t think the legislature has any business overseeing his work or that of the Commission.

Now the sparks were going to fly. In my comments on HB 2310 I said,

Mr. Herman is a tremendous expert in his field and has contributed a great deal to the industry of a nonprofit housing. He’s been in his job longer than any of you have been in the legislature. So the fact is that that institutional knowledge needs to be transparent to the oversight of the legislature and the fact that [he says] “well, we’ll get back to you,” or “we’ll figure it out and send you an e-mail” to answer very specific questions doesn’t give you the entire picture of a very complicated system of housing finance in the state that has been built over thirty years using low income housing tax credits.

For this comment, the chair again lectured.

I do not appreciate you impugning the intentions of the commission or that particular person because I found that he has been very transparent any time we ask any information he has been very forthcoming so please don’t do that. Unfortunately I had to you after Mr Herman and so he does not have the opportunity to defend his honor.

His honor? You can watch for yourself and decide whether I impugned anyone. The bottom line here is that neither the Commission nor the Commerce Department want to be transparent. And as Mr. Herman’s comments to the Committee show, there is a general resistance to change. And we know change is needed. The cost of their product is rising. And though it was modest, the JLARC findings exposed a weakness in the “don’t-worry-your-little-head-about-that” responses that are typically issued by the Commission and the Commerce Department when it comes to fairness and costs.

Things got more interesting when the Committee moved HB 2311, a bill that would conduct a regular audit of the Commission, something that I said we support as well. But before I did, the Chair of the Committee said this,

And Mr. Valdez if you would limit your comments to how you can constructive –  how we can constructively amend this bill if needed based on the agencies testimony please.

What? There isn’t any precedent to tell a person testifying on what to testify about before they speak. However, the chair does have absolute discretion on what and who speaks and can even decide whether the person is out of scope in their discussion and the chair can rule a person out of order. This power is ancient, and one that I respect deeply. In our system, the chair manages debate, and that word chair really relates back to the Speaker’s chair. In the Parliament, even the Prime Minister, chosen by the Queen, has to sit and speak at the discretion of the Speaker. In the United Kingdom, the Speaker’s role is non-partisan, in our own, the Speaker is partisan. Still, the rhythm of debate and movement of legislation is set by the chair.

A committee chair has devolved authority from the Speaker, and the Speaker is the House, and the House is the people. It’s the reason that elections matter so much. Losing control of the House means losing considerable power. Someone said I should protest the attempt to control what I said. My view is that that chair can scold and lecture whomever she wants; it is her prerogative. I like the Canadian Parliament’s explainer the best if you want to read more.

Still, after being told by the chair to comment on what “we can do to make this bill successful,” I said,

With all due respect, Madam Chair, I’ll comment on what I am going to comment on which is support of the legislation . . . Mr Herman mentioned that there is not an interest in the wider community in the sources and uses of funds within affordable housing projects particularly those with tax credits. But there is, and a lot of us are trying to understand how these projects are working and where the funding is coming from . . . it would be helpful to have a regular audit for the legislature for the community for advocates for everyone.

I then described the strange numbers from Building 9 at Magnuson Park; $61 million in sources, $62 million in uses, and a $73 million budget on the Mercy Housing website. This project got a special appropriation from the legislature of $2.5 million in a previous legislative session. Most people I talk to say that this is the Speaker’s pet project. Again, who knows. He hasn’t answered any direct questions about it.

While the chair of any committee does have power and discretion to use it, those of us who are demanding answers have to do what we do too, which is to keep asking questions. I see the legislative process as liturgy; each of us has roles to play. Mine is to call out inefficiency in our current housing policy. As I pointed out in my comments, efficiency is compassionate. If we all committed, together, to maximizing efficiency more people would get the help they need when it comes to housing. But sometimes the power rests on the side of the status quo. We’ll keep pushing back against that over and over and over again, as long as it takes so that there is more housing for more people in all parts of the state for people of all levels of income.

But what we saw at the last Committee meeting is evidence that the power of our current Speaker, Frank Chopp, is slipping. He’s showing his hand. Why were these three bills even on the calendar? Why the effort to defend the honor of Kim Herman? Why kill such a modest bill that would help Farmworkers? The Speaker’s days are numbered. He’s decided to leave. He has a choice: do the right thing on the way out the door, or be dragged, by the Furies, killing bills in plain sight, defending aging bureaucrats and gross inefficiency, holding on to the drapes. I think, in the end, he’ll do the right thing. We’ll see.