While poking around on the “Legislative Meeting Schedule for the month of October,” I discovered that on October 15 – near the poker room of the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino at Ocean Shores – the meeting of the Washington Senate Full Committee of Energy, Environment and Telecommunications (E, E and T) is slotted to take place.
Why?
Especially given the 12th Annual Irish Music Festival – also in Ocean Shores – isn’t until the following week.
With “30 bands on 10 stages,” over five days, comprising “the largest Irish music festival on the West Coast,” you’d think the E, E and T committee could have done a better job coordinating the timing of its “conservation of energy” deliberations while also entertaining committee – the Senate Full Committee – constituents.
Conservation and all that.
So what does the E, E and T committee do?
From their website:
“The Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee considers issues relating to the availability, production and conservation of energy, as well as environmental issues including water and air quality, the State Environmental Policy Act, the Shoreline Management Act, oil spill prevention, recycling and solid waste, hazardous waste, toxics, and climate change. The Committee also deals with the regulation of telecommunications.”
Here again, as concerns the E, E and T’s concerns with the environment, another major scheduling oversight: the opportunity to learn “all about mushrooms, the role of fungi in forest ecology,” take a guided mushroom walk and much, much more in the three-day 16th Annual Mushroom Fest all begins the day after the Senate’s Environmental committee meeting at the casino.
True, the “experience-delectable-wild-forest-mushroom-cuisine” event is down in Yachats, Oregon, a bit far – not to mention out-of-state – for the Washington State Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Full Senate Committee to travel.
There are taxpayers’ expenses to consider after all.
So why a casino, a costal casino?
In the spirit of Kenny Rogers “you need to know when to hold ’em” this is about holding them – the E, E and T-them – accountable.
Why not just meet on state taxpayer supported state capitol grounds in Olympia’s Senate Hearing Room 1, or 2, or 3, or 4? Can’t a work session to “improve access to broadband services” (the ‘T’ in E, E and T) “and other business” be conducted in Senate Conference Room A, or B, or C?
Or the E, E and T committee could meet in a location specifically related to its work, say like the E, L and E (Early Learning & K-12 Education) committee which will hold its upcoming confab at the Puget Sound Educational Service District Main Office.
This is, after all, the same E, E and T committee that met (in Pasco) to consider why consumers should not “pay more at the gas pump to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Traveling hither and yon, here and there, spewing out all these emissions – “about half of which come from transportation” – now gas-guzzling government types – instead of conserving, by limiting unnecessary traveling: like holding meetings at a coastal casino – will hit the road for beach vistas while figuratively kicking sand in the public’s face.
Why a casino and what do “Las Vegas style slot machines” have to do with broadband services unless they fall under “other business”?
I don’t know either. I’ve emailed Sen. Doug Erickson, Republican Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee to find out.
Hold’em right here for an explanation.
