NW,
I attended the hearing on the first bill (the bill numbers escape me at the moment), the one that would have eliminated the Commission. It was a blatant attempt to place the WDFW under the control of the Legislature, it would have replaced the Commission with a powerless "Citizen's Advisory Board" and put the Commission's responsibilities into the hands of a Legislative Committee consisting of six Senators and six members of the House. The hearing was something of a poke in the eye for the House Natural Resources Committee; except for a couple of disgruntled Grays Harbor gillnetters and one guy who was upset because the Commission had put some new restrictions on "small scale dredging" in rivers, the general tone of the testimony was that the Commission was doing a pretty good job, certainly better job than what a committee of politicians could manage. I think that they realized that this bill was going nowhere and the second bill represented their fallback position. Essentially the second bill would have gutted the provisions of 1995's Referendum 45 which, by an overwhelming vote, took the right to appoint The WDFW Director away from the governor and gave it to the Commission. It's definitely an attempt at a power grab, a group of Representatives from rural districts would like to subject the WDFW to a much larger degree of political control (not that there isn't a lot of that already, but that's another issue).