Senator Guy Palumbo represents Washington’s 1st legislative district in the State Senate. He joins us as a “Wire Insider” to discuss infrastructure, growth, and the advice he has for new legislators.

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My top priority for my district in 2019 is to pass an infrastructure package. So, I live in the 1st district, which is kind of Mountlake Terrace, Bothell, Brier, Kirkland, and Snohomish County. And the number one issue is that we have to deal with growth, but we haven’t been given our infrastructure investments over the last 10 years. So, for my district, what matters most — and what I’m going to spend most of my time on — is trying to pass Senator Steve Hobbs’s infrastructure package bill. It’s still being written, but, whatever that comes out to be, that’s going to be my top priority for my district.

You know, I’m still kind of a new legislator. So, I’m still in my first term, even though I’ve been there for two years. And I did a lot of hard learning in the first two years, and I’d say probably the best thing I could tell the new folks is to spend more of your time talking to your colleagues across the aisle and in your caucus than you do “the hallway,” as we call it: So, the lobbyists in the hallway. So, unfortunately, we get spun up a lot and tend to kind of gear towards solving the issues that we hear from the lobbying community and really, ultimately, what it comes down to is we all have to take votes. So you need to go and educate yourself on what your colleagues in the House or the Senate really care about and what they want to see in a bill before they vote for it. That’s much more important than the lobbying community.

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