Speaker Laurie Jinkins, who has served the 27th Legislative District in north Tacoma since 2010, became a icon after becoming the first out Lesbian member of the Washington state legislature and, later, broke barriers as the first Queer and female speaker of the house in January of 2020. However, her long and tireless advocacy for the state's LGBTQIA+ community began long before.

She chaired the Tacoma Hate Crimes Task Force from 1990 until 1992. She also led the effort to approve Referendum 71, which affirmed Washington's domestic partnership law, in 2009. Jinkins has also held important civic and public positions, where she was in a position to promote issues and policies of equality and justice. She served on the Tacoma Community College Board of Trustees. After a post as an assistant attorney general in Tacoma, she served as an assistant secretary in the Washington State Department of Health from 1995 until 2008. Currently, she holds the post of deputy director at the Tacoma—Pierce County Health Department.

During the 2021 regular session, Jinkins balanced her duties masterfully and got difficult legislation passed during a remote session. While the legislatures in Oregon and Idaho were forced to shut down, the speaker successfully ended the session without a single case of COVID-19 due to legislative work. As a result, she has received high praise from her peers and the media alike.

The Seattle Gay News had a virtual sit-down interview with Jinkins in May. She was eager to discuss the legislative session from the basement of her modest home. Like many families during the pandemic, she was jostling for space with her wife, Laura Wulf, who was also working from home, and her 21-year-old son, who was taking an online college theater course in her usual home office.

Jinkins discussed the bills, people, and moments that defined the Washington state legislature this year.

Renee Raketty: First of all... I wanted to check in with your family. How's everything going there in Tacoma and, most importantly, has everyone been vaccinated?

Laurie Jinkins: Our almost 21-year-old son has been living with us. He's going to college from here at home. All three of us got vaccinated together both times. Today he's going to school from home. I'm working from home and my wife is also working from home....

It can be a little bit difficult with all three of us trying to get things done in a relatively small house, but we're doing great. It's been wonderful to be able to spend this much time with our son. I thank you for asking, and I hope you're vaccinated and doing well too.

Raketty: As a lawmaker from Tacoma, how do you balance the needs of your constituents and the concerns of Washingtonians across the state, as speaker, and how does that role affect that dynamic?

Jinkins: I think I'm lucky that my district is very reflective of a lot of Washington state. So the two things are really quite aligned, but in the end, I'm always the representative from the 27th District and it's my constituents who elect me. So, I try to really pay attention to the things that my constituents ask of me, to the issues that are going on here in Tacoma.

The other thing that I've kind of taken on as speaker is that my job is really to listen to the caucus and to bring the caucus together and to be led by their voices.

There have been quite a few times, for example, where I'm a public health person.... I am quite aware that I don't sit in the middle of the caucus in terms of my beliefs around that. I won't stop that legislation from moving forward if a vast majority of the caucus believes that it should, but I will vote "no."

I'm always trying to work and balance, but I've got a great district and I have a great caucus. So, mostly — about 99.9% of the time — those are all aligned.

Raketty: The legislature was the most diverse it's ever been. Obviously, you welcome new members of color, women, and LGBTQIA people. How did the legislature achieve this success, is it sustainable, and what can be done to encourage continued diversity among lawmakers?

Jinkins: Having a diverse group of members is important, in and of itself, because it inspires other people to want to run. You know, obviously, when I ran and was the first out Lesbian elected to the legislature, the number of people who emailed me — I wasn't expecting this — in the Queer community about it, inspiring them to run, was really heartening. Same thing when I was elected as the first woman speaker and the first, you know, Lesbian speaker. That's important because it inspires other people.

The other thing that it did for us: lots of people have been lauding this last session as the most productive session in more than a generation of Washingtonians, just incredibly productive. That's because we had diverse representation in our caucus. It meant that we were bringing many more diverse voices to the table.

One of the things I always find interesting is that it can make it harder to get to a resolution on how we're going to handle something, because there's more diversity, but the solution is always better. It always represents more people and the experiences of more people. So, it's worth it to have to do that work at the table where there are very divergent opinions, because our solution is better.

I'm excited. We have the most diverse leadership team that we've ever had, the most diverse caucus and the best session that we've had in more than a generation.

Raketty: For too long, Transgender individuals, such as myself, have had a hard time getting access to gender-affirming treatments. Often their insurance denies them coverage for these services. So how will the passage of Senate Bill 5313 change that?

Jinkins: That was probably one of our biggest victories for the LGBTQ community this year and especially our Trans community. We've done work over the past four or five years with the insurance commissioner: issuing rulings, talking about discriminatory treatment by insurance companies, and telling insurance companies that they need to be nondiscriminatory. What we continue to see, either because of a lack of understanding or also, probably, because of wanting to just save money, [is that] so much of the treatment that our Trans brothers and sisters need is denied in the insurance side...

What's great is that this bill applies not just to people who have private insurance through their employer or who buy it on the exchange but folks who are Medicaid recipients. Some of our poorest Transgender people in Washington state, our Medicaid program, will also cover gender-affirming care.

All people really have to do is make sure that they're seeing a healthcare provider who will say this is a medically necessary treatment for this person. If that's what their provider says, then their insurer is supposed to provide it to them. I think now what we'll be watching is to make sure that insurers do provide it, that they don't slow-roll it and things like that. Members will be paying special attention to that.

That's where we really do a lot of constituent work, because that's not really about writing a new law if people are getting slow-rolled or things like that. That's about members contacting the insurance commissioner's office. It's about members contacting insurers and saying, "Hey, this isn't okay. You're not following the law."

I shouldn't project. Hopefully, it'll all be fine and no one will have any trouble. I hope it's one of the big final steps in terms of transformation of healthcare for our Trans community.

Raketty: HIV/AIDS continues to be a major concern for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. People of color and men who have sex with men and Transgender individuals are obviously at greater risk. What is being done to ensure that the funding for the HIV/AIDS testing, medical care, social services, and outreach continue to be a priority?

Jinkins: For us in the House, so much of what happens is about our internal advocacy. For example, having Nicole Macri who represents the 43rd District, who's part of the LGBTQ caucus with me and has been there in the House and is very well respected, is now on our budget negotiating team. Having members of our community, to quote Hamilton, "in the room where it happens" is really important. I think we saw that this year with some of the funding on HIV/AIDS and making sure that we continued and increased some of that funding.

One of the other big challenges that we were having for folks who are living with HIV/AIDS is we were seeing a lot of requirements around failing on certain drugs first before they could move on to another drug. For many people, that would happen when they would end up changing insurance from one form of insurance to another. They already had been through a process where they had tried certain drugs that didn't work. They know what worked, and requiring them to go through this to start over again and fail on maybe cheaper drugs was actually very detrimental to their healthcare.

So, that was something that I started working on and Nicole picked up when I became speaker, and we've been able to address that, and that's an issue that we'll continue to move forward. So there's a lot that we do in the healthcare area.

I would say both with the Trans community and folks who have HIV/AIDS, stigma and discrimination are still probably the most significant issues that we have to face. That is both about the law — at this point our laws are really good — [and] a lot more about community and education and support for folks who are out there traveling through the world.

Raketty: It's been a year since the death of George Floyd.Thousands rose up and called for police accountability. I myself was subjected to pepper spray, flash bangs, and blast balls at the hands of Seattle police. How did the legislature address these concerns?

Jinkins: We had a great team in the House, and the Senate also had some great bills, but we passed almost a dozen bills on police accountability. What we were really guided by... was trying to... support members of law enforcement who are good actors and trying to do the right thing.

What we've seen over time is that the relationship between our law enforcement community and the broader community has broken down and there is a real lack of trust. That's in part due to a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability. So, we really wanted to make sure that we were starting to rebuild the relationship between our law enforcement community and our larger community.

I won't remember all 12 of the bills, but you see bills that really limit and contain the tactics that law enforcement officers can use in terms of choke holds and use of tear gas and all sorts of other more militaristic kind of tools that our law enforcement has had access to, that they either won't have access to anymore or they will be severely limited.

One of the things we also wanted to make sure that we did [was] not prohibit the use of some tools, [so] that what would happen in the end was firearms would be used more frequently, right? You don't want to have these unintended consequences.

And our team was very lucky in the House, because we worked a lot with the families of individuals who'd been killed in police custody. We really followed the lead of those families. Then, we had an incredible team led primarily by Jesse Johnson from the 30th District, who really did an incredible job of working with everybody to kind of try and find the right paths forward. Deborah Entenman also had a tremendous bill to do independent investigations when we have someone, you know, for me in Tacoma, like Manny Ellis, who's killed in police custody. Now the investigation of that will actually be independent of the law enforcement body where the person was killed. That was the second bill.

We have a bill from Jamie Pedersen from the 43rd, which is essentially about how you get licensed, basically, decertifying a police officer. I spent a bunch of my career licensing healthcare providers and, by gosh, if we can take away a healthcare provider's license, we ought to be able to also take away the license of a police officer if they're not behaving appropriately.

Then, we had a number of bills on auditing. Manka Dhingra had a really good bill that is a duty to intervene. When a law enforcement officer sees something that's contrary to policy or law, they're required to intervene.

I'm proud of the work we did this year in this area. This is the first year we've really done much of this at all. We did Initiative 940 [requiring law enforcement to receive violence de-escalation, mental health, and first-aid training, and to provide first aid; and changing standards for use of deadly force]. We're by no means done — at all. This is the beginning of a transformation... and I think we've really weighed in a very big way, but I wouldn't want to say that this is a one and done year. It's just a start.

Raketty: Washington has the third highest number of reported hate crimes in the nation, yet HB 1071, which would have tweaked Washington state's hate crime statutes to give them a designation of "crime against persons" didn't pass this year. What is the benefit of making this change, and will you push for it during the next legislative session?

Jinkins: Part of the feedback that we got on this bill — at least in my caucus — [was that] there's a real sensitivity to the creation of criminal statutes and who those criminal statutes have been applied against.

So, I think one of the things that happened with the hate crimes bill this year is people wanted some more time to think about that. There's no question that folks want to do better enforcement and better prevention around hate crimes, but we also don't want to have unintended consequences. We've seen in the criminal justice system where there's huge disproportionality in terms of who's arrested and who's charged with crimes. I should just [say] that they're not all unintentional consequences. Some of them are very intentional in terms of the way that the law is set up.

I think Rep. [Javier] Valdez — he was the prime sponsor of the bill — I think he's going to be working on the bill over the interim and working with community and folks directly impacted to make sure that there's confidence that that the bill is getting at the right perpetrators and is not going to be used to create disproportionate impact, as so many of our criminal laws have been.

So, I think that's the rub about that. There's really no question about whether or not we should prohibit hate crimes and do a lot more work around that. We've seen this, particularly in the Asian community, the number of hate crimes. I think this is driven a lot by our former president and the language that's been used by leadership in the other Washington, [which] has been very, very harmful. We want to make sure that we can do even more about that if we can.

Raketty: We have a regressive tax code here in Washington, where low-income earners pay disproportionately more in taxes than those who earn a higher income. How did lawmakers address this issue, and what could be done to further shrink this gap?

Jinkins: There are three things that we've done and are doing. The first one is we have a tax structure work group that's led by Rep. Noel Frame from the 36th Legislative District. There is a reason that that's a bipartisan, bicameral group that has all kinds of interested parties at the table working on this... because of the recognition of how regressive Washington's tax structure is.

So, just to give your [readers] a sense about this: The poorest 20% of Washingtonians spend nearly 18 cents of every dollar they earn on taxes. The wealthiest 5% of Washingtonians spend less than 2.5 cents of every dollar they earn on taxes. That's the definition of regressive. It's actually the definition of unfair, basically. Just an unfair tax structure.

Part of the reason is because we realize so heavily on, for example, sales tax. For every bit of toilet paper that anybody buys, if you're the poorest person, you pay the same amount of sales tax as the wealthiest person does, but the wealthiest person doesn't need... a bunch more toilet paper than the poorest person, right? So, it becomes a much bigger part of the poor person's income to pay those kinds of sales taxes.

That group started work last year. It will work through this year, and it's going to come back with some suggestions for us in a very large sense about how we restructure our tax system to be much less regressive, hopefully.

This year, I'm really proud this session, we passed a capital gains excise tax. So for folks like me... I don't know about you, Renee, but I've never paid a capital gains tax. That's one of the things I'm hoping to do someday. I don't know how I'll ever get there...

If you have a stock that you bought for a $100 and you sell it for a $1,000, the tax is on the $900 difference — the $900 you make on that. It just applies to stocks and bonds. It's a 7% tax. In Washington state, you'd have to earn more than $250,000 on the sale of those stocks and bonds before you would ever have to pay a penny of taxation. It doesn't apply to real estate or anything like that.

So, the estimate is with this $250,000 exemption and a 7% tax, less than 1% of Washingtonians — actually about 1,500 people — would pay this tax, yet it would bring in revenue of about half a billion dollars a year. That's partly because we have the wealthiest people in the world that live in our state.

Doing that is really about rebalancing our tax code and making sure that this recovery, for example, that we're in — this great, strong recovery — is not built on the backs of the poorest Washingtonians, and that everyone is paying their fair share.

Then, the final thing that we did is we adopted the working families tax credit, which will mean that the poorest families that I was talking about will, depending on their incomes, be able to get a tax credit of between $500 and $1,200 a year returned to them from taxes that they've paid.

Between the capital gains tax and the working families tax credit, that starts to bring a little bit more fairness to our tax structure. I'm not saying it fixes everything, but we start moving in the right direction.

Raketty: Drug possession will be treated as a misdemeanor in Washington, versus a felony. This law will expire in two years. Why the change, and how will this help to end the scourge of drug addiction that's affecting our communities?

Jinkins: This is an issue that got thrown to us right in the middle of the session. The fact that we were able to figure out a way to address this I think is kind of extraordinary.

The Supreme Court, I think in February, issued an opinion that said that our statute that says... just possessing drugs is illegal and is criminal and that you're presumed to be guilty of intentionally possessing drugs, the Supreme Court said "no."

In fact, [in] the case that did this, the Blake case, a young woman had borrowed a pair of jeans from, I think, a friend. I might not remember this correctly, but there were some methamphetamines in one of the pockets, and she was not aware that there was methamphetamine in these borrowed jeans. She got arrested. The meth was found, and she was convicted of drug possession, even though she had no intention to possess it.

So, the Supreme Court said our statute was unconstitutional. We had to do work to figure out how we wanted to move forward. I think the biggest thing that we did is that we recognized that... our system... when it comes to drugs here in Washington and drug possession, is not working at all. It's not satisfactory at all. People who are addicted to drugs need to have access to treatment. We did not have any way that we were providing people access to treatment. It doesn't really matter who you are. If you're someone who has an addiction, if you're their family member, their friend, their neighbor — someone who sees them, you know, in their full-blown addiction out in the community — Washingtonians want that person to get treatment and to get better if they can.

The biggest thing that we did in our legislation was we invested real money in treatment. We also created a ramp away from the criminal justice system and putting people in jail. We created a ramp instead, like before even charging someone with a crime, [diverting] them into treatment if they want.

Eventually somebody could be found to have committed a misdemeanor, which is up to a year in jail if you're convicted, but they're required to [make] a couple of attempts at... treatment before that would ever happen. We're really trying to switch this from a criminal justice approach, which we all recognize hasn't worked and is the most expensive failed way to try and address somebody's addiction.

The other thing that happens is if somebody comes out of jail — the problems that they have getting housing and getting a job because they have a criminal record — exacerbate the problem again, right? We're trying to avoid all of that and really give people the option for treatment.

The reason that we set a two-year sunset is that some of this is a little bit experimental. We want to make sure that the diversion that we're doing is actually working. We'll be able to collect some data, see whether our approach is working, [and] what we need to do differently and maybe update it. Honestly, having that sunset date motivates all of us who are trying to figure out the right path forward. It'll motivate all of us to really work hard to find that path rather than be... resistant and not do anything. It'll make us do something.

Raketty: HB 5227 will require diversity equity inclusion, and antiracism training in higher education starting in 2024. How might this benefit our academic communities, and more broadly our society?

Jinkins: This is really part of recognizing that we have such diversity in the lived experiences in Washington state and making sure that both our students and our educators have the opportunity to explore that, to try and understand that better.

We're the most trade-dependent state in the nation, which means that we are dealing with and working with nations all over the world at a level that other states just are not. Our ability to understand our own diversity [will create] a better and stronger business community for folks who are going through our higher education system. It will also help us recruit a more diverse workforce that can help provide better services to other Washingtonians [and] to all of our trade partners.

Folks may have seen that we had two bills that required equity and diversity education, both in higher ed and in our K-12 boards of education. On the boards-of-education bill, we had a pretty awful amendment that was offered by Jim Walsh, that basically would have restricted any real discussion about past harm that had been done or current harm that's being done and all kinds of stuff. Usually, when you're in the majority, it's the minority that gets to decide how long they debate a topic. We let him know that we were really appalled by the amendment and, if he decided to offer it, then not only would it be voted down but there would be a lot of debate about it. He insisted on offering it, and 47 members of my caucus stood up and gave speeches about why diversity was important, why equity and inclusion were important concepts to understand. Many of them talked about their own families. It was the first time ever since I've been in the legislature that the majority party said we are going to spend every minute that it takes for us to drive this point home. It felt good to represent our values on the floor like that.

Raketty: What can be done to make sure that undocumented workers in Washington are not being left behind when accessing COVID-19 relief?

Jinkins: I won't be able to remember the budget amount right now, but I think on a per-capita basis, Washington state probably has invested more than any other state in the nation for our undocumented workers, because so many of our undocumented workers — a lot of them are farm workers — have not had access to any of the federal dollars that have come out to help many of the other poor members of our community. The federal government restricted any payments to those undocumented workers.

So we have a refugee and immigrant relief fund in Washington state, and we are using our own dollars to make sure that we can provide resources to those communities. We're really doing it through nonprofits that already work with our immigrant communities, so that there is strong trust there in the resources that we're providing.

We've also done a fair amount around the healthcare area. Honestly, the biggest step that needs to be taken can't be taken here in this Washington. It has to be taken in the other Washington: it's immigration reform.

We also provided some money to the Office of Civil Legal Aid to be able to help undocumented workers when they are having trouble with housing and credit issues and other things like that. They had been prohibited from using any of their resources in that way by the feds. So we invested some state dollars in that.

We also passed a bill on overtime workers for agricultural workers, which will certainly help provide many of our migrant farm workers with the incomes that they deserve because of all the overtime work that they're engaged in.

We definitely made some advances, and we did a lot of work on immigration and naturalization services too and making sure that we're investing more money in that, so that people can become naturalized citizens... here in Washington. Lots of great things are happening, but [there's] probably still more work to do.

Raketty: As you know, we're facing a housing crisis not only because of COVID-19 but gentrification and rising housing costs. What is being done to provide relief to those individuals who are facing this crisis?

Jinkins: We invested a billion dollars...related to the eviction moratorium. There are a lot of people who've been without work for a long time, who have not been paying their rent because they have no money to do that. Once the eviction moratorium is no longer, all of those folks would be at risk of being evicted. So we've invested a billion dollars... to provide renters and their landlords.

One of the other challenges we have is we have a lot of mom-and-pop landlords who have also have not been getting any income over this time because of the moratorium, and they're on a foreclosure cliff. Some of this money is to do foreclosure help, but a lot of it is to pay back rents from renters who haven't been able to pay, so that the renters aren't going to be evicted for failure to pay rent, because of the money that the state has invested.

I was just on a fundraiser this morning for the Pierce County dispute resolution center. We've gotten more funding to our dispute resolution centers statewide, because they are very helpful when an eviction starts to happen, to get the landlord and the tenant together. They're... helping tenants be able to stay in their rental property or to negotiate with the landlord about how... and when the tenant leaves. So, they're going to be getting funding to help with that.

We have other kinds of homeless-prevention dollars. A lot of what we're doing around homelessness is both providing some funding through our capital budgets, so that local jurisdictions or housing authorities can, for example, buy hotels that are closed now and transition them into housing units.

What we also know is a lot of people who are moving from homelessness into a housed situation also need some supportive services wrapped around them in order to be successful. So, one of the big things that we've really started investing in in state government is not just the physical buildings or money for physical buildings but operating money for ongoing support, so that people have the wraparound services they need to stay stabilized in housing.

Raketty: As you know, climate change continues to be a major threat to our way of life here in Washington, not only the natural beauty but also our economy. Decisions we make will have an effect on businesses as well. There's been a sort of a stagnancy when it's come to addressing some of these things. What do you think was different this year? How would that help moving forward?

Jinkins: I think a couple of things are different. I would say stagnant no more... Probably the two biggest climate bills that we passed — and put Washington now on the leading edge of addressing carbon — are the low-carbon fuel-standards bill and the Climate Commitment Act, which is like a cap- and-trade sort of bill.

I think there are a few things that are different this year. Going into this session, we did not know how a fully remote session would work out. We did not know what we would be able to do or not do. So I asked members of the House to file no more than seven bills each. What happened was members really focused on big issues.

Second thing for us is we had four priority areas... among the House Democrats. One was COVID response. The second was building on economic recovery. The third was racial equity, and the fourth was addressing the existential threat of climate change. So we knew that those were the four areas we really wanted to work on.

I think we had strong Senate partners both in leadership [and] in members. The Senate hasn't always been as interested in these topics as the House has been. This year we found a great Venn diagram, where we were all very interested in it.

Finally, I just want to call out Joe Fitzgibbon, who represents the 34th Legislative District. He's the chair of our Environment Committee. He worked overtime to address issues that people raised. I mean the Climate Commitment Act — we got that less than 10 days before the end of session.

We had members who had a lot of opinions about it, and Joe worked 24 hours a day, 10 days in a row, to be able to address members' concerns so we [could] get it across the finish line.

We haven't really addressed carbon very much in our transportation sector. The low-carbon fuel- standards bill was really our way to address it in our transportation sector. Then, the Climate Commitment Act basically sets up caps on how much carbon industry can produce. Then, you can buy somebody else's carbon production if they're producing less carbon than you, but, as time goes on, the ceiling of how much carbon can be produced in the state starts to ratchet down, so the cost of buying gets more and more expensive. That motivates businesses, especially petroleum companies, to decrease their carbon production, because it's costing them money to continue producing carbon.

Raketty: The state suffers from a childcare shortage, as you know. What is being done to address this and alleviate some of these challenges? Not only for families but for childcare workers as well?

Jinkins: The Association of Washington Business did a study about a year and a half ago in which they found that businesses in Washington state were losing over $2 billion a year because of lack of access to affordable childcare. That's because their workers couldn't come to work because they didn't have access to childcare, right? This is a crisis for individual families. It's a crisis for our business community and, therefore, our whole economy.

We talked a little bit about the capital gains tax. A big chunk of the money raised through the capital gains tax is going to pay for childcare, is going to build out our childcare system.

The other thing that we passed this year was the Fair Start for Kids Act. Tana Senn from the 41st District, who's chair of our Children, Youth, and Families Committee, really led on the development of that piece of legislation, along with Claire Wilson from the 30th District. It really lays out how we will build out our childcare system.

The other thing that's really important is to have a level of quality in our childcare system, so that kids get the social and emotional development that they need in order to be prepared to go to school and prepared for their future. That bill is really a mixture of subsidizing childcare, expanding the number of providers by providing better payment for providers.

You mentioned our provider community. Improving the payment structure for providers and making sure that we have that the childcare that's being provided for families and kids is high quality [sic].

Raketty: I wanted to ask you, what were maybe two of your biggest personal successes and maybe one thing that you just wish had passed?

Jinkins: Two things that we haven't talked about that I'll mention are [that] our public health system has been underfunded for decades. I mean underfunded in huge, huge ways. The pandemic showed us how much we need a public health system that actually works and what can happen if you have a local public health system that doesn't have the funding to work.

So this year we invested in [an] ongoing way: $150 million per-year in our local health jurisdictions to really build the best working public health system that we can. Public health works in all those realms. I'm excited about that.

Then, the second big thing is we got through the session with not a single member of our staff nor a single member of the legislature, nor a single member of the public, getting ill with COVID as a result of legislative work.

Now, to the south in Oregon and to our east in Idaho, both of those legislatures had to close down because of outbreaks. We were able to work through and to have everyone be safe. That is in large part due to our commitment to public health. I thought a little bit about the fact that there was a new Speaker of the House elected in New Hampshire, and he had a big outdoor public election and kind of party. Two weeks later, he was dead.

It wasn't just that we were able to have no one get COVID but we were perhaps more transparent than we've ever been. Members of the public could sit in their homes and testify on bills, which has never happened before.

So our public engagement was different than it's been historically, but I think there's a lot we could definitely argue that it was more accessible to people than it had ever been.

We did a lot. We passed a lot this year. I think not every one of our police accountability bills got through. I think I really want us to think about that for next year. I also think that our work related to criminal justice reform, we need to work more in strengthening our transformation there.

The third thing is, even though I can argue that we were more transparent this session than ever before in history, I can't wait for next session and to be back in person with people and be able to meet with members and members of the public in person. I expect that we'll be able to do that next session. So those are all things I'm looking forward to.

Raketty: Thank you so much, Laurie, for your time. I really appreciate it. I know our [readers] appreciate it, and we all wish you continued success.

Jinkins: Thank you, Renee. It's always great to see you and be a part of your casts and your interview.