I have spoken with a Washington State Senator that he said he may be willing to sponsor a bill like Katie's Law.   He is going to go over the actual law that the State of New Mexico passed and discuss it with his staff.   He also said that he is working on getting funding to take care of the backlog of the 65,000 samples of DNA that still need to be put in the CODIS national database.  The Senator also mentioned that I need to get a sponsor for a similar bill from the State House of Representatives and he gave me the name of someone to start with.

I have also been in touch with the CODIS Lab Administrator for Washington State and she said that it has taken two years to get HB 1023 - 2007-08 and SB 5095 - 2007-08 as far as they have in the Legislature.  These bills deal with expanding the DNA identification system to include information from persons convicted of certain gross misdemeanors and misdemeanors. 

She feels that it may be a good approach, to have a new bill that combines both the expansion of the list of qualifying offenses and a form of "Katie's Law."  She is suggesting a two step system.  She thinks the expansion of qualifying offenses piece should happen first and then after a year the Katie' Law piece would kick in.  This way the CODIS lab would be better able to handle the workload and there would not have to be a separate vote for either bill.

I woke up the other night thinking we could call it the "2 for 1 DNA Law."  If you have any questions or comments regarding this, please let me know.  Suggestions would be helpful too.

For more details, you may wish to refer to my previous blogs: What is More Important Than Saving Lives? and Washington State Needs Something Like "Katie's Law"

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I support Katie's Law, Washington State needs it!