OLYMPIA - The House Local Government Committee passed a bill to make changes to the Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District (MLIRD).

Committee members voted 7-2 during an executive session Tuesday in favor of moving Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6512 out of committee and on to a full vote of the House with a "do pass" recommendation.

The bill must be presented to the House for a final vote by March 2, which is the last day to consider most opposite house bills.

"It's a complicated issue and something I think the locals need to take care of," said Rep. Dean Takko, D-Longview, who is the committee chair. "I think it might not be a bad idea to keep this bill alive so if someone wants to try and get the locals together and come up with some kind of an answer to this thing, there's a vehicle to do it."

ESSB 6512 is sponsored by Sen. Janéa Holmquist Newbry, R-Moses Lake, and aims to make several changes to voting and property assessment laws for the MLIRD. It has been promoted by MLIRD board directors Mick Hansen and Rich Archer, along with former state Sen. Harold Hochstatter.

Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard, voted against passing the bill on Tuesday. She said public testimony indicated a deep divide within the MLIRD that needs to be addressed, but Olympia isn't the right place to do it.

"One of the things that I really think is critical is a good public process and it appears that has been lacking," she said. "When two groups hit head-on, maybe something else is called for."

She suggested MLIRD stakeholders should bring a "facilitator" in to help guide them through the process of making revisions to voting rules and assessments, saying, "This is something the community needs to hammer out on their own."

Rep. Katrina Asay, R-Milton, agreed with Angel that the bill needs some work, but she voted along with the majority to pass it along.

"I don't like the bill," she said. "I don't think it's viable, there's lots of problems with it and normally I'd vote it down, but I feel like it's come to the point where the state has to intervene here and I hope between here and final passage they can come to some resolution and get this right. We need to keep this alive to put pressure on the different parties to come to the table."

Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce Director Debbie Doran-Martinez testified against the bill in Olympia last week and said she watched the latest vote online.

"All the representatives that spoke on the bill in executive session felt strongly that this bill does need to come back to the local community to get things figured out, but some felt they needed to keep the bill alive to put pressure on us to get together and get things figured out," she said. "Although we would have liked to begin working with a clean slate, bringing it back to the local community is exactly what we wanted to happen."

Holmquist Newbry said Wednesday she looks forward to working with her House counterpart, Rep. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, to iron out any potential language changes before the bill moves forward.

She agreed with the majority committee decision and said the bill acts as a tool to make sure the MLIRD issues aren't "kicked down the road" for future ratepayers to deal with.

"The ultimate goal is to make sure everyone at home is on the same page and that's what Judy (Warnick) and I will be trying to do as this bill moves through the process," she said; adding she encourages additional input from MLIRD stakeholders.

For more information on ESSB 6512, visit www.leg.wa.gov and click "bill information" on the left side of the page to search by the bill number.