Bill statuses have been updated as of March 31.
You know us and love us for our hyperlocal news, but this week, we rallied the troops to look further into the horizon at Olympia, Washington, where the 2025 State Legislature is currently in session.
From January 27 until April 27, your elected senators and representatives are proposing legislation, debating changes, holding hearings in committees and working to pass laws that impact you: the people. And, we’re coming up on an important deadline! February 21 is the last day for a bill to pass out of its committee of origin, or it dies.
As Valerie Osier reported last year, the legislative session is full of Saw traps for bills, with plenty of places for even the best legislation to meet a bitter end. So if you see something you like on our list (or something you hate) and it’s still in its committee of origin, you better bother your electeds on the double before Friday.
If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry: we also have a breakdown on how to contact your legislators.
Here’s the skinny on 20+ bills currently moving through the legislative session, plus our columnist Lauren Pangborn’s prior piece on urbanist legislation she’s stoked for. And because we’ve got your back, we’ll be updating this story (and Lauren’s) with the bills’ statuses before each of the rest of the legislative session deadlines: February 28, March 12, April 2, April 8, April 16 and April 27.
Jump to a section:
Worker protections
Further penalizing the purchase of sex work
Strippers Are Workers (SAW), a dancer-led advocacy group fighting for the labor rights of dancers in Washington, was the powerhouse behind last year’s passage of The Strippers’ Bill of Rights, which we covered in depth here. This year, SAW is fighting against House Bill 1265, which they say would put sex workers at greater risk of harm.
House Bill 1265, which is co-sponsored by local representatives Ormsby and Hill, would label purchasing sex from a sex worker as “commercial sexual exploitation,” and bolster punishments for the crime, bumping it from a misdemeanor to a felony and increasing potential fines.
SAW argues that this change equates buying sex with sex trafficking and would put sex workers in danger — data shows greater criminalization of sex work usually results in greater violence and STD risks for sex workers.
“End-demand laws do not eradicate force, fraud and coercion in the sex-trade,” SAW wrote in a statement. “It makes them more pervasive.”
~ ES
Bill: HB 1265
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Local representatives Natasha Hill and Timm Ormsby, who signed on to the bill, and members of the Committee on Community Safety.
Bill Sponsor: Rep. Chris Stearns (D-47)
Bill Cosponsors: Taylor, Salahuddin, Richards, Davis, Obras, Ormsby, Parshley, Hill
A safety net for striking workers
Currently, employers can deny unemployment benefits to striking workers, which puts employees collectively bargaining for better pay and conditions in a precarious position; the businesses suffer without employees, but so do the employees. A bill sponsored by Spokane’s own Sen. Marcus Riccelli could protect workers, making it so that workers would become eligible for unemployment on the second Sunday following a strike’s inception, if they meet all other state criteria.
It would also protect employees who lost work because of an employer lockout, or because a business shut down due to a strike, even if they personally weren’t striking.
Last year, the state legislature tried to pass even more sweeping protections for workers, which would have allowed them to access unemployment benefits after two weeks off the clock. Similar policies had been passed in other states, and Washington’s unemployment fund was in the green, but the bill died in the Senate after passing the House, possibly due to pushback from big businesses. Those same businesses are fighting against this bill again this year.
According to reporting from The Washington State Standard, the state’s unemployment fund is still in good shape and “the Washington Employment Security Department estimates the bill would lead to a less than 1% increase in unemployment insurance claims when a qualifying strike occurs.”
If this bill passes, it could put bargaining power back in the hands of the people, rather than the businesses that use their employees’ dependence on their wages to drag out contract negotiations, force concessions and take advantage of workers’ labor.
~ ES
Bill: SB 5041
Where it stands: Scheduled for public hearing in the House Committee on Appropriations at 1:30 pm on April 4.
Who to contact: Sen. June Robinson (D-38), Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and other members, which can be found here. If this passes the Senate, it’ll be worth calling your representatives as well.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Marcus Riccelli – our Spokane senator!
Bill Cosponsors: Conway, Hasegawa, Saldaña, Salomon, Stanford, Dhingra, Nobles, Trudeau, Valdez, Bateman, Lovelett, Cleveland, Frame, Orwall, Pedersen, Slatter, Wellman, Wilson, C.
Wage replacement for unemployed undocumented workers
Undocumented workers are ineligible for unemployment benefits, despite paying taxes and nearly $400 million into unemployment funds in the last 10 years. It’s another indignity in the long list of ways undocumented workers are taken advantage of and at higher risk for exploitation; they can be fired without any consequences or cost to their employer and unemployment isn’t available as a safety net.
While federal laws dictate unemployment benefits can’t be given to undocumented workers, Senator Rebecca Saldaña has pitched a creative workaround: Senate Bill 5626, establishing a “wage replacement program” for employees who are ineligible for unemployment benefits. The program would be funded with a .01% surcharge on qualifying employers.
As cities around the state point to the Keep Washington Working Act — which forbids city and state employees from collaborating with immigration officials — as a key component in the state’s success, it’s more important than ever to fight for real protections for the more than 156,000 undocumented laborers in our workforce, rather than rely on exploiting them for economic gain.
~ ES
Bill: SB 5626
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Members of the Senate Committee on Labor & Commerce, and Sen. Marcus Riccelli, who was not listed as a sponsor for the bill.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D-37)
Bill Cosponsors: Lovelett, Valdez, Cortes, Alvarado, Orwall, Kauffman, Slatter, Dhingra, Frame, Hasegawa, Nobles, Stanford, Wilson, C.
Protecting undocumented workers from coercion
Washington aims to protect workers from being threatened or taken advantage of based on their immigration status.
Senate Bill 5104 would penalize employers who use a worker’s immigration status to pressure them into unfair wages or poor working conditions. If passed, businesses could face fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
Workers who experience this kind of coercion could file a complaint, triggering an investigation by the state. This bill seeks to ensure all workers — regardless of status, will be treated fairly in the workplace. Currently, the bill has passed the Senate and is moving through the House. If passed, provisions in the bill would go into effect July 1, 2026.
~ SR
Bill: SB 5104
Where it stands: Scheduled for public hearing in the House Committee on Appropriations at 1:30 pm on April 3.
Who to contact: You can encourage Rep. Liz Berry (D-36), the chair of the Labor & Workplace Standards Committee, to schedule this bill for a hearing. You can also contact other members of the committee, and our local representatives Timm Ormsby and Natasha Hill.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Bob Hasegawa (D-11)
Bill Cosponsors: Bateman, Conway, Nobles, Saldaña, Stanford, Valdez, Wellman, Wilson, C.
Reproductive justice
Informed consent for IUD procedures
State Rep. Amy Walen (D-48) saw just how painful an IUD insertion can be firsthand when a close family friend, nervous about the procedure, had asked Walen to sit with her during her insertion.
“I was blown away by how awful it was,” Walen said. “It took a long time and she was sobbing in pain. I was sobbing, it was traumatic for both of us.”
“She just kept saying, ‘Amy, scissors, scissors!’ That was the word she used to describe the pain of it.”
Walen was so shook by the experience that it inspired her to introduce HB 1077 — co-sponsored by 16 other representatives, including local representatives Timm Ormsby and Natasha Hill — which would require healthcare providers to notify patients about any pain management options they can make available before scheduling placement or removal appointments.
Providers can currently choose to offer pain control options like numbing medication for the cervix, local anaesthetic or Valium. Providers like Planned Parenthood also offer nitrous oxide and ultrasound-guided insertions, which can make the process much quicker. This bill would ensure that whatever options a clinic can provide are offered up front, during the scheduling of an appointment, so patients can make an informed decision about whether they want to go through with a potentially painful procedure.
Walen hopes that if the bill passes, it will help patients go into their IUD insertions or removals with “their eyes open,” and be able to make an informed decision about if they want to get a potentially painful procedure at that clinic, somewhere else or at all.
If it doesn’t pass out of the House committee it’s in by Friday, Walen said it will die. You can provide testimony on this bill here. There are no representatives from legislative districts 4, 5 or 6 — our Spokane County districts — on the Health Care & Wellness Committee where the bill is currently stalled, but you can still call representatives from other districts on the committee and let them know how you feel, before Friday.
~ ES
Bill: HB 1077
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: The chair of the Health Care & Wellness Committee, Dan Bronoske (D-28). There are no Spokane County representatives on the committee, but two Eastern Washington reps sit on it: Joe Schmick (R-9) and Andrew Engell (R-7).
Primary Sponsor: Rep. Amy Walen
Bill Sponsors: Ryu, Leavitt, Ramel, Berry, Duerr, Reed, Taylor, Macri, Callan, Gregerson, Wylie, Pollet, Ormsby, Reeves, Bernbaum, Hill
Protecting people who lose pregnancies
While many of the bills we’ve covered in this round-up so far have been stalled out in committee, the Dignity in Pregnancy Loss Bill, is moving at lightning speed. It’s already cleared the Senate and is now sitting with the House’s Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee.
The bill would ensure every Washingtonian who experiences a pregnancy loss — whether it’s miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death — can make their own decisions about how they will handle that loss without having to fear criminalization. Currently, it is a crime to “conceal a birth,” in Washington, which means medical examiners and county coroners can investigate people who lose a pregnancy as if they are criminals if those people don’t report it correctly.
As progressive organizations push the Washington state legislature to “Trump-proof” the state, this bill could close one of the gaps that currently allows for prosecution because of a pregnancy loss.
The bill would repeal the crime of “concealing birth,” and “removes the jurisdiction of county coroners and medical examiners over certain bodies whose death resulted from known or suspected abortion, premature births, or stillbirths,” according to the bill report. It would also require correctional institutes and detention facilities to report to the state the number of incarcerated people who have experienced a pregnancy loss while incarcerated.
~ ES
Bill: SB 5093
Where it stands: Passed the Senate, waiting for a second reading in the House as of March 25.
Who to contact: Local representatives Hill and Ormsby and members of the House Civil Rights & Judiciary, including Rep. Jenny Graham, the Republican representing District 6 — which includes Mead, Medical Lake, Airway Heights and a portion of North Spokane.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Manka Dhingra
Bill Cosponsors: Wellman, Cleveland, Bateman, Pedersen, Wilson, C., Hasegawa, Liias, Nobles, Salomon, Slatter, Stanford, Valdez
Voting reform
Opening the door for Ranked Choice Voting
House Bill 1448 would allow a county, city, town, school district, fire district, or port district to conduct elections using ranked-choice voting for elected offices.
Voters would have the option to rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third and so forth. If their first choice isn’t likely to win, their ballot would then count for their next choice. Local representatives Hill and Ormsby have both signed on to cosponsor this bill.
The Washington VOICES (Voting Options, Implementation, Compliance, Education, and Standards) Act would provide local governments a path to adopt ranked choice voting (if said government wished to do so) and set guidelines for implementing and educating voters about the reform.
~ SAM
Bill: HB 1448
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Chair of the House Committee on Appropriations (and local Spokane rep!) Timm Ormsby and other members of the committee.
Primary Sponsor: Rep. Mia Gregerson (D-33)
Bill Sponsors: Farivar, Parshley, Doglio, Obras, Mena, Fosse, Scott, Salahuddin, Bernbaum, Pollet, Ramel, Nance, Walen, Reeves, Hill, Paul, Berry, Duerr, Fitzgibbon, Callan, Reed, Goodman, Peterson, Ortiz-Self, Macri, Ormsby, Simmons
Concealing primary party selection
The state of Washington requires voters to declare a political party of preference when they cast votes in presidential primary elections, which the parties can use to choose their candidates.
While declaring a party is not the same as registering as a member of the party, it is still publicly available information that shows which party’s primary a person voted in. Party affiliation is also the only part of a voter’s ballot that can be seen before it is counted — the rest of the information on any ballot is private. And in the 2024 election, nearly 50,000 ballots were rejected because the voters who filled them out did not declare a party.
Senate Bill 5050 seeks to alleviate at least some of those problems by requiring that the party affiliation is not visible until the envelope is opened, though the information would still be requestable.This law seeks to improve privacy and voter confidence in the state’s elections.
~AH
Bill: SB 5050
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Sen. June Robinson (D-38), Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and other members, which can be found here. Local senator Marcus Riccelli sits on that committee.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Jeff Wilson (R-19)
Bill Cosponsors: Christian, McCune, Schoesler, Holy, Dozier, Short, Torres, Chapman, Fortunato
Voting access for incarcerated people
Under state law, people incarcerated in Washington jails or state hospitals are eligible to vote, as long as they’re not serving time for a felony. It can be difficult in practice, though: a 2024 report to the legislature showed barriers to voting, like insufficient information available, logistical issues and a lack of voter outreach.
House Bill 1146 seeks to mitigate some of those logistical challenges and increase voter turnout amongst incarcerated populations. The bill would require all jails and state hospitals to designate a jail voting coordinator and create voting plans to help incarcerated people get access to voter registration forms, nonpartisan information about candidates and other items on the ballot and collect data on voter registration and turnout.
The bill passed out of the House Committee on State Government & Tribal Relations, with a few changes. The first draft would have required jails and state hospitals to give equal access to candidates to campaign at them, which was removed in the second version. It now sits in the Appropriations committee.
Bill: HB 1146
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Chair of the House Committee on Appropriations (and local Spokane rep!) Timm Ormsby and other members of the committee.
Bill Sponsor: Rep. Tarra Simmons (D-23)
Bill Cosponsors: Farivar, Ryu, Mena, Macri, Obras, Doglio, Gregerson, Pollet, Ormsby, Hill
LGBTQ+ rights
Expanding hate crime protections
Currently, a hate crime — a felony punishable with up to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both — is defined as a person “maliciously and intentionally” doing one of the following acts “because of the person’s perception of another person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, or disability”:
- assaults another person
- causes physical damage to or destruction of the property of another
- threatens a specific person or group of persons and places that person, or members of the specific group of persons, in fear of harm to person or property that a reasonable person with similar characteristics to the victim would have under the same circumstances.
But two identical companion bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, would expand that definition slightly, clarifying that if a qualifying crime is committed and even just partially motivated by the perception of the victim’s identity, it’s a hate crime.
For example, if someone was stabbed because the attacker thought they were gay, it wouldn’t matter if they actually were or not — the attack would qualify as a hate crime.
Senator Manka Dhingra, the prime sponsor of the bill moving through the Senate, hopes changing the law will make it easier for juries to reach a guilty verdict on hate crime cases.
“The current language of the Washington hate crime statute leads to not guilty verdicts, even in the face of clear evidence of racially motivated violence,” Dhingra said. “By changing the language, we can hold individuals accountable if a jury finds their violence is motivated by bias, without requiring them to find that bias was the only motivation.”
If either bill passes — and it seems like the House Bill is more likely to move forward than the identical Senate Bill 5038 — this legislation could be the latest in a recent effort to more effectively punish hate crimes. Last year, the Washington legislature passed a new law that expanded existing legislation to consider biased destruction of public property a hate crime as well, spurred by a string of anti-queer vandalism against public murals in Spokane in 2023. It went into effect during a second wave of vandalism in 2024.
~ ES
Bill: HB 1052
Where it stands: Passed the House and is waiting for a second reading in the Senate as of March 26.
Who to contact: As the chair of the Law & Justice Committee, Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-45) controls whether this bill is scheduled to move forward in the discussion process. You can also contact other members of the committee, and our Spokane Senator Marcus Riccelli.
Bill Sponsor: Rep. Cindy Ryu (D-32)
Bill Cosponsors: Ramel, Leavitt, Berry, Taylor, Reed, Thai, Obras, Macri, Cortes, Callan, Parshley, Fosse, Gregerson, Goodman, Pollet, Kloba, Berg, Davis, Ormsby, Salahuddin, Reeves, Hill
Protecting students’ privacy
Last year, state legislators passed an initiative that enshrined parents’ rights to access educational material about their children. But activists have been fighting against a section in the initiative that could be interpreted as requiring school staff to “out” queer students who may have shared their identities with their teachers or school administrators, but not their families.
A bill moving through the legislature this year would amend that initiative to only guarantee parents’ rights to “educational information,” about their students, rather than the more broad reaching “medical or health records” and “records of any mental health counseling.” This would protect queer students who seek mental health counseling for exploration of their own gender or sexuality identities, and put the state back in compliance with an older law giving teens the right to mental health treatment without parental consent.
Transgender students we interviewed earlier this year told us these protections are critical, giving queer kids time and space to process with trusted adults, especially if they don’t have a safe situation at home. And for students of all identities, it protects their rights to seek counseling of any kind without notification of their parents, which could be a critical protection for students coming from unsafe home environments.
There a few other edits to the initiative in this bill, some of which that would give parents additional rights, like to be notified if a student has an unexcused absence.
Local teens travelled to Olympia in January to advocate for this bill, including Albert Johnson, a student at The Community School.
“As a trans student, my teachers knew before my parents knew,” Johnson told RANGE. “I think that that was really beneficial to me to have that time to kind of explore before my parents knew about it.”
~ ES
Bill: SB 5181
Where it stands: Passed the Senate, scheduled for executive session in the House Committee on Education at 4:00 on April 1.
Who to contact: Chair of the House Education Committee Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-37), and local representatives Timm Ormsby and Natasha Hill.
Primary Sponsor: Sen. Claire Wilson (D-30)
Bill Sponsors: Pedersen, Dhingra, Frame, Liias, Lovick, Nobles, Stanford, Trudeau, Wellman
Transphobic bills voted most likely to die in committee
As of February 22, all of these bills are dead.
If you care about protecting the most vulnerable in our state, like transgender kids, you may have seen and been alarmed by some bills proposed in the state legislature targeting gender-affirming healthcare and athletic participation. While it’s harmful to transgender youth that the bills were proposed at all, we’ve got some good news: they’re all pretty unlikely to pass.
We looked at three bills proposed across the House and Senate that targeted transgender children, and for all three, no action has been taken since January 13, when they were originally referred to committees. If they aren’t scheduled for a hearing and voted on before the end of the day Friday, they’re out.
And, with only Republican sponsors on all of the bills, it’s all but certain that they’re dead in the water. Here’s a short list of them anyway, for the morbidly curious:
- SB 5012: would group student athletes participation in sports by their sex chromosomes.
- SB 5097: would force the Washington Interstate Athletics Association to consider sex in developing their policies, and consider organizing sports “into distinct activities for boys and girls.”
- HB 1038: would prohibit gender-affirming medical care for minors, including puberty-blocking drugs, hormones and surgeries (which are rarely performed on minors)
A local connection here: Spokane Valley area senator Leonard Christian was a co-sponsor on SB 5012. You can contact Christian here, if he represents you.
~ ES
Miscellaneous
Social media tax to support local journalism
Back in 2016, social media companies went through a messy break-up with the news by suppressing journalistic content that helped the platforms grow. Well, in Washington, social media platforms and search engines could soon be subject to a surcharge, with the funds collected from it going to fund grants to local journalism outlets.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Senate Bill 5400 (and its companion bill HB1836), which would create a Local News Journalism Corps Program to financially support local journalism outlets via grants. The original bill proposed funding this by drawing $20 million annually from the existing Workforce Education Investment Account. The newest version, which just passed into the Ways and Means Committee — its final gatekeeper before a floor vote — would instead pull funds from a 1.22% surcharge on social media platforms and search engines, capped at $6 million annually per platform.
The bill text noted that “over the past 10 years, newspaper advertising has decreased 66%, and newsroom staff have declined 44%” and seeks to remedy that by providing grants to outlets that employ at least three journalists and meet a list of other criteria including:
- Providing public information to Washington residents
- Publishing editorial content that is at least 25% focused on local or regional issues
- Updating 25% of its content on at least a weekly basis
Grants from this program would be distributed in amounts proportional to the number of hours worked by journalists at the applying outlet, which would direct a larger amount of the funds to larger outlets.
~ ES
Bill: SB 5400
Where it stands: Had a public hearing in the Senate Committee on Ways & Means at 4:00 pm on March 18.
Who to contact: Sen. June Robinson (D-38) is the Chair of the Ways and Means committee, where the bill now sits. Local senator and co-sponsor of the bill Sen. Marcus Riccelli (D-3) also sits on the committee. You can sign in to provide general testimony on it here.
Primary Sponsor: Sen. Marko Liias
Bill Sponsors: Boehnke, Chapman, Cortes, Frame, Krishnadasan, Lovelett, Lovick, Orwall, Riccelli, Saldaña, Shewmake, Valdez
Righting the rental ship
Could this finally be the year for rent control in Washington? Democrats think so.
House Bill 1217 and companion Senate Bill 5222 seek to stabilize rental pricing in the state by capping yearly rent raises at 7% and requiring notification to tenants of any rent raise greater than 3% at least 180 days before the raise would go into effect. (Spokane has already implemented the 180-day notification period.)
The most recent draft of HB1217, which just passed out of the House Committee on Appropriations, would also cap the cost of move-in fees and security deposits at equal to or less than the price of one month’s rent.
There are other stipulations in the legislation, too, like provisions allowing tenants to terminate leases, empowering the Attorney General to enforce the bill and creating a mechanism for tenants to pursue damages for violations of the bill through civil suits. It would also create a landlord resource center to help them understand and follow the new rules.
This could be a slam dunk for legislators — a Cascade PBS poll showed 68% of Washington voters want rent stabilization. The House Bill has passed its first committee and been referred to the Rules Committee for review. The Senate Bill was just discussed in executive session in the Senate Committee on Housing.
~ ES
Bill: HB 1217
Where it stands: It passed the House and is scheduled for public hearing in the Senate Committee on Ways & Means at 1:30 pm on April 4.
Who to contact: Rep. Laurie Jinkins (D-27) is the Chair of the Rules committee, where the bill now sits. You can sign in to provide general testimony on it here.
Primary Sponsor: Rep. Emily Alvarado
Bill Sponsors: Macri, Ramel, Peterson, Berry, Mena, Thai, Reed, Obras, Farivar, Parshley, Ortiz-Self, Cortes, Duerr, Street, Berg, Taylor, Fitzgibbon, Doglio, Timmons, Tharinger, Fosse, Gregerson, Simmons, Wylie, Pollet, Kloba, Nance, Davis, Ormsby, Lekanoff, Bergquist, Scott, Stonier, Hill
Bill: SB 5222
Where it stands: It has passed out of the Committee on Housing and now waits for a hearing in the Ways & Means Committee
Who to contact: Sen. June Robinson (D-38), Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and other members, which can be found here. Local senator Marcus Riccelli sits on that committee.
Primary Sponsor: Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27)
Bill Sponsors: Chapman, Bateman, Conway, Frame, Hasegawa, Lovelett, Nobles, Orwall, Pedersen, Riccelli, Robinson, Saldaña, Slatter, Stanford, Valdez, Wilson, C.
Tribal representation on the health boards
Last year, we covered the lack of tribal representation on the Spokane Regional Health District Board.
Members of the Board of County Commissioners had chosen not to fill the vacant seat reserved for a tribal representative because of a conflict with the American Indian Health Commission of Washington (AIHCW), who submitted multiple potential names for representatives from different local tribes. County Commissioner Josh Kerns told RANGE at the time that when the AIHCW sends over a single name (instead of a few options), “that person will be appointed to the [SRHD] board.”
State Rep. Natasha Hill is trying to close the loophole with a new piece of legislation, currently in the House Committee on Local Government. House Bill 1946 would require all boards of health in the state to include a tribal representative from each tribe and charitable organizations serving tribes in their service region. The bill would also remove the AIHCW as the middleman, instead requiring boards of health to seat tribal representatives and then notify the AIHCW.
In Spokane, which currently has no tribal representatives on a board of seven, this could quickly change the balance of power on the Spokane Regional Health District board, as they would be required to appoint representatives from the Spokane and Kalispel tribes, and likely from organizations like The Native Project, the Urban Native Youth Organization and the American Indian Community Center.
~ ES
Bill: HB 1946
Where it stands: Passed the House and is waiting for a second reading at the Senate Rules Committee.
Who to contact: Members of the House Committee on Local Government. There are no Spokane representatives on this committee.
Primary Sponsor: Rep. Natasha Hill
Bill Sponsors: Lekanoff, Reed, Parshley, Pollet, Obras, Nance, Ormsby, Macri
Another bill on death’s doorstep
Like some of the proposed bills that could negatively impact transgender youth, some of the same Republican senators have collaborated on a bill that would overwrite the Keep Washington Working Act and require Washington state and local law enforcement to fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. It bans ‘sanctuary policies’ that limit local agencies from working with ICE. It’s also extremely unlikely to pass, and hasn’t been touched since it was read at its first committee on January 13.
The bill would have mandated that Spokane County and in-state jails notify federal authorities before releasing undocumented inmates, and allow officers to detain individuals based on immigration status. It also would have prevented state and local agencies from limiting communication or assistance with federal immigration enforcement, including honoring detainer requests and providing access to inmates.
Supporters say it strengthens public safety, while opponents argue it could lead to racial profiling, erode trust in Spokane’s Police Department and make immigrant communities more vulnerable.
~ SR
Bill: SB 5002
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: As the chair of the Law & Justice Committee, Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-45) controls whether this bill is scheduled to move forward in the discussion process. You can also contact other members of the committee, and our Spokane Senator Marcus Riccelli.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-31)
Bill Cosponsors: McCune
Language Access, Court Interpreters
A bill strengthening access to quality court interpreters for people with limited English-speaking abilities is making its way through the legislature.
Court interpreters offer language interpretation in legal proceedings, providing equity and equal justice for speakers of all languages. The bill improves standards for credentialed and non-credentialed interpreters.
House Bill 1174 would require the state court system to establish written procedures for providing language services, known as “language access plans.” During early testimony this legislative session, lawmakers said the bill is needed because current state law does not provide the highest quality interpreters. The cost of an interpreter would be funded by the entity that ordered the court proceeding. The bill would allow a person to refuse an interpreter only if they state it publicly and have a strong reason. It was first introduced and rejected in 2024 because it was seen as too expensive.
~ AH
Bill: HB 1174
Where it stands: Passed the House and is waiting for a second reading at the Senate Rules Committee.
Who to contact: Spokane representative Timm Ormsby chairs the Appropriation Committee, controlling if this bill is scheduled for a hearing or not. You can also contact other members of the committee.
Bill Sponsor: Rep. Strom Peterson (D-21)
Bill Cosponsors: Thai, Ryu, Taylor, Ortiz-Self, Simmons, Goodman, Davis, Ormsby, Lekanoff, Salahuddin, Hill
State may require clergy to report abuse
Washington requires educators, police, doctors and social workers to report suspected abuse to law enforcement, but despite having a history of the Catholic Church stone-walling investigations into abuse by priests, the state currently doesn’t require church officials to report child abuse to the authorities, if they learn of that abuse through confession.
It is one of only five US states that don’t require such disclosures.
Senate Bill 5375, and its companion House Bill 1211 would change that, roping clergy into that list of professionals, another attempt after similar legislation died last year after lobbying from the Catholic Church. The bill is opposed by church lobbies that believe it will force priests to violate sacred religious traditions, namely the “seal of confession,” which bars priests from disclosing what they hear in the confessional.
Churches around the world can be havens of financial, spiritual and sexual abuse against men, women and children. The most famous example of this is the Catholic Church’s history of systemically covering up the sexual abuse of altar boys, but abuse has been exposed in many other churches.
~ AH
Bill: HB 1211 and SB 5375
Where it stands: The original House bill is dead, the Senate bill has passed the Senate and has been referred to the House Rules Committee for review.
Who to contact: For the House Bill, contact local Rep. Timm Ormsby, who chairs the Appropriations Committee where the bill currently sits. For the Senate Bill, contact Denny Heck and Steve Conway (D-29), the chair and vice chair of the Rules committee where the bill sits. While local representatives Ormsby and Hill cosponsored the House version, Sen. Riccelli did not cosponsor the Senate version, so it might be worth it to contact him, too.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Noel Frame (D-36) sponsored SB 5375, and Rep. Amy Walen (D-48) sponsored HB 1211.
Senate Cosponsors: Wilson, C., Bateman, Dhingra, Nobles, Valdez
House Cosponsors: Taylor, Reed, Ryu, Ramel, Macri, Callan, Pollet, Fey, Kloba, Duerr, Ormsby, Lekanoff, Stonier, Hill
Better emission tracking
Washington is one of the most proactive states in the nation when it comes to addressing climate change: the 2021 Climate Commitment Act (and maintained by the citizens via an initiative vote in 2024) created a fund for investment in clean energy infrastructure, and the 2021 Clean Fuel Standard and investments in electric cars are driving down the carbon footprint of transportation in the state.
But progress toward these goals is only measured every two years, which creates a lag in what we know about how we’re progressing toward Washington’s stringent carbon emissions goals. So lawmakers have proposed requiring the state Department of Ecology to report carbon emissions to the legislature twice as often.
According to write-ups on Senate Bill 5036, this new schedule would allow lawmakers to tweak the programs it has established more quickly in response to faster numbers. The bill has bipartisan support from sponsors.
~AH
Bill: SB 5036
Where it stands: Passed the Senate, just had an executive session in the House Committee on Environment & Energy at 1:30 pm today.
Who to contact: Committee chair Sen. June Robinson (D-38) and other members of the committee, including local senator Marcus Riccelli.
Bill Sponsor: Sen. Matthew A. Boehnke (R-8)
Bill Cosponsors: Chapman, Dozier, Fortunato, Harris, Hasegawa, Short, Wellman
State looking for more power over local police
Washington is home to some of the most violent police departments in the country, including the third most deadly — Spokane’s. Activists, including many located in Eastern Washington, are pulling for several bills that aim to alleviate this problem.
One way they hope to do that is to give state-level agencies more power over local law enforcement. One of the pieces of legislation advocated for by the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability — which includes several activists from Spokane who had loved ones murdered by local police — is HB 1056, which would give the state Attorney General explicit authority to prosecute local police for violating state laws that govern their conduct.
For example, there are people in the Spokane Police Department who believe that deadly force can be a form of “deescalation,” the technique of reducing tension in dangerous situations to make violence less necessary. That idea flies in the face of state guidelines defining deescalation as the antithesis of force.
Ostensibly, this legislation would allow the AG to crack down on these uses of force.
~AH
Bill: HB 1056
Where it stands: Dead.
Who to contact: Committee chair Rep. Jamila Taylor (D-30) and other members of the committee, including local-ish representative Jenny Graham (R-6) who was briefly Spokane famous for calling an Inlander reporter a “c*ck-sucker” and “a lying piece of shit.”
Bill Sponsor: Darya Farivar (D-46)Bill Cosponsors: Thai, Mena, Scott, Reed, Cortes, Berry, Peterson, Stonier, Doglio, Parshley, Taylor, Fosse, Goodman, Alvarado, Simmons, Entenman, Macri, Morgan, Eslick, Gregerson, Pollet, Ormsby, Bergquist, Salahuddin, Reeves, Hill
