The Legislature’s Endgame: Normal Schools Funded, a Central Board Killed

Olympia, March 4.—Special.—The legislators returned to Olympia from their Sunday vacation with the evident determination of accomplishing much needed legislation during the remaining ten days of the session. Both houses convened at 11 o’clock, and after the noon recess were in session all afternoon. The house held the first evening session tonight, and between 8 and 10 o’clock there was a great deal of debate but very little business transacted.

The most important action today was the passage of the bill appropriating $100,000 for the normal schools at Cheney and Whatcom and the defeat of Scobey’s bill putting the control of all the state institutions under one board. The senate committee on corporations tonight unanimously decided to return Helm’s railroad rate bill to the senate with the house amendments, without recommendation.

The senate met at 10:30 this morning and transacted but little business before the noon recess. President Luce named the sifting or calendar committee as follows: Ide, chairman; Washburn, Megler, Gilbert and Miller. Senator Megler introduced a concurrent resolution, which was adopted without discussion, providing for a joint committee of inspection and investigation during the interim of the legislature, with power to inspect every state institution and the books of state officers at least once a year and to report to the governor and the legislature in 1897.

The bills for the building of a road over the Cascade mountains connecting Eastern and Western Washington were returned by the committee without recommendation. The claims made by the friends of both routes are so diametrically opposed to each other that the committee was unable to determine which was willfully misrepresenting the facts and was therefore unwilling to make any recommendation. It is now extremely doubtful if any action is taken by this legislature on either route.

These bills were passed: Senate bill No. 271, by Hutchinson—providing for the punishment of fraud in the sale of stock; Senate bill No. 158, by Horr—giving county attorneys authority to administer oaths and examine persons under oath touching any alleged violation of law. Belknap’s bill to reduce the governor’s salary from $3,000 to $2,000 per annum was indefinitely postponed, as were bills to reimburse the sheriff of Wahkiakum county for selling school land, to appropriate $100,000 for the state penitentiary, and to appropriate $3,500 for the Ellensburg normal school. All bills making appropriations for state institutions will be indefinitely postponed, and the various amounts will be contained in the general appropriation bill.