State legislatures all over this nation are either beginning their legislative sessions or gearing up to do so.
Governing magazine has an article in the current edition titled
2015’s Top 10 Legislative Issues to Watch.
That list includes:
- Affordable Care Act
- Funding CHIP
- Public Pensions
- School Testing
- Transportation Funding
- The Cost of Water
- Specialty Drugs
- Corrections
- Tax Policy
- Carbon Emissions
That's 10! But, wait, the writers included others they call trending:
- Oil and Railroads
- Net Metering
- Pandemic Preparedness
- E-Cigarettes
- Ridesharing
If you are in emergency management you should be comfortable by now in not being in the top 10 priorities. Unless you have the "big one," you are not going to be on the top of the agenda for legislators. In this particular case we made the trending list with oil and railroads and pandemic preparedness. There's nothing on climate adaptation either. It's too long-term an issue for legislators who only think in four-year terms.
Here in Washington state it is all about education funding and then some governor initiatives on carbon. I have been told that there is something in the governor's budget about helping counties plan for oil train incidents, but it looks like that funding and FTE will go to the Department of Ecology.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
