Hirst Rulilng and Senator Warnick

I'm Bob Larson. The 2017 legislative session started last week with a Moses Lake Senator taking the lead on agricultural, water and economic-development issues.

Senator Judy Warnick has also been promoted to the position of vice chair of the Senate's majority caucus which is overseeing the merger of the committee she's headed the past two years, with another influential in the Ag community ...

JUDY WARNICK ... "The Senate Ag Committee is now the Senate Agriculture, Water, Trade, and Economic Development Committee. We basically combined two different committees. There was a Trade and Economic Development Committee. Our, originally, Ag Committee had economics, but it was developed just for rural development. It will be a Super-Committee because we're gonna take agriculture from when the seed goes in the ground, how it's watered, and if it's exported it'll be sent out that way, and how much of a development that will be for our rural areas. So, it is a Super, Super-Committee."

Warnick says not everyone on the committee is from districts where ag is dominant ...

JUDY WARNICK ... "I think it's going to help because we have many members on our committee, including our ranking member, who are not agricultural-related. And, so it's going to help me educate the colleagues that I have to what agriculture is all about."

Warnick will also act as a negotiator for the state's capital budget.

She says there are also other priorities she hopes to address like the recent state Supreme Court ruling, or the Hirst decision, that will impact rural home building and access to water.