OLYMPIA, Wash. — Some 3,000 members of the public testified last week to comment on two of the most hot-button bills in the Washington legislature: whether or not to maintain the state’s eviction moratorium and further reopen the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thousands of Washingtonians testifying on pending legislation would normally create a bustling scene reminiscent of the 1,000 hairdressers that descended on the Capitol Complex in 2019.
But the capitol grounds were eerily quiet in Olympia as the committee hearings took place virtually, like nearly all of the legislature’s proceedings this session.
Two weeks into this technological experiment, legislators who are used to putting on a suit for grueling 14-hour days find that the work is still intense from home or a satellite office. “It feels just as mentally taxing as it does to be down there, except that I am sitting at my work-from-home desk in South Everett,” said Sen. Marko Liias (D-Lynnwood).
Liias has a dedicated setup for remote legislating with two monitors, a pair of cell phones, and an iPad. He finds himself toggling often between Zoom, the video conferencing platform for the legislature’s public work such as committee hearings and floor debates, and Microsoft Teams, the platform for internal caucus meetings within parties.
“The unique strengths of Teams is its integration with Office 365 and the ability to share and collaborate on documents, while Zoom is really geared toward the live broadcast,” he said. “The ability to use two technologies in parallel facilitates us being a little more productive.”
Microsoft declined to comment on the lawmakers’ choice of rival Zoom as the official legislative platform.
Other legislators lament this year’s virtual session as exceedingly slow and cumbersome. “The essence of a session is all about the relationships and the actual ability to talk to people at a moment’s notice,” said Rep. Andrew Barkis (R-Olympia). “That rhythm is gone.”
Brian Bonlender, a part-time lobbyist, echoes that sentiment. “There are a lot of conversations that can occur very quickly and do not require any more than five minutes,” he said. “The flow of information and what’s happening is constricted. Legislators rely on those conversations.” Bonlender has had success scheduling short blocks of time for phone calls with legislators via Calendly.
Barkis still commutes into Olympia, where his property management company maintains its corporate office, because his home internet in unincorporated Thurston County is not sufficiently reliable when his son is logged in for virtual schooling. But even working from a dedicated office, he has endured technological glitches, from his legislature-issued Lenovo Thinkpad shutting down for an update in the middle of a committee to the virtual hand-raise feature in Teams acting finicky during a caucus meeting.
“It’s not really working,” Barkis concluded of virtual legislating. “It’s a lot slower.”
But for those whose main role is to testify and lobby, this year’s virtual session has created some unexpected benefits. Misha Werschkul, executive director of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, used to complete a two-and-a-half hour round trip from Seattle to Olympia. Those days are gone. Now, she multitasks at home while waiting for her name to be called, and submits written testimony. She’s also observed a wider geographic diversity of participants, and more people with disabilities testifying.
The Washington State Senate first piloted remote testimony in 2015 and made its use official in 2018.
Mike Ennis, government affairs director for the Association of Washington Business, hopes the expanded use of remote testimony is here to stay. “I love it. I want more people to testify, be engaged, and care about issues,” he said. “The legislature just needs to come up with systems and processes to handle it.”
There are still technical and procedural hurdles, such as how to accommodate 1,500 people who sign up for public comment without stretching hearings on for days. Ennis also noted that while in the queue to speak, the public can only see the person who is currently speaking. Gallery view, which allows the user to see the faces of the legislators, is only available during the brief window that a member of the public is speaking.
“That’s an accountability issue — you don’t even know if the legislator is there,” Ennis said. “There is a much different feel to the process when you can see the legislators in full on committee.”
The inability to engage simultaneously with one’s colleagues is a major concern for Barkis ahead of full floor debates, which are the meat of the legislative session.
“How do I have a virtual debate on the floor when I can’t see all the nuances?” he said. “New members are missing all of the rhythm. We haven’t met. There isn’t that bonding going on. They’re out on an island figuring out how to do this.”
Washington’s shift to remote lawmaking occasioned by the pandemic puts it in the company of at least 28 states, Guam, Washington D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have made rule changes since March 2020 to accommodate remote participation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Among other states similar to Washington whose sessions are nearly 100% virtual, such as Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, and Vermont, Zoom is the preferred platform for conducting official legislative business. Closer to home, the Seattle City Council meets and hears public testimony via Zoom, although City of Seattle departments that are not legislative in nature use Cisco WebEx.
However, many of those state legislatures have adopted a hybrid model with at least some in-person gatherings. The California legislature, for example, is using the nearby Golden 1 Center, where the NBA’s Sacramento Kings play. New Hampshire’s house met outside in a so-called “drive-in democracy.”
“The Capitol is a big damn building,” Barkis said. “If the Seahawks can play a whole season of football games and not contract Covid, I think there’s a way we can do it.”
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