As for those who didn’t have sufficient governments to fret about between the conservative majority at Seattle Metropolis Corridor and the looming fascist takeover on the nationwide degree, the Washington State Legislature gavels to session on Monday, January 13. For the previous few weeks, lawmakers have scrambled behind the scenes to prefile a bunch of payments, most of which is able to go nowhere. The information staff at The Stranger, ever your north star for native, regional, and state politics, referred to as round and came upon what payments we should always all comply with throughout this session. We’re scripting this a little bit early this yr, so a number of the payments have been prefiled, some haven’t, however we’ll hold updating this as we see these Home Payments (HB) and Senate Payments (SB) numbers drop.
In return for this unimaginable public useful resource, we ask that you simply name or e-mail your State Home Representatives, your state Senator, and the Governor to advocate for the payments that resonate with you—you already know, “throughout these troubling occasions,” as they are saying.
Financial Inequality and Progressive Taxation
Wealth Tax 2.0: It seems like that is the yr for a wealth tax. Washington state should grapple with an unprecedented finances deficit, and Democrats expanded their majorities in each chambers—together with some lefty champions resembling Rep. Shaun Scott and Rep. Natasha Hill. It’s all coming collectively and it’s about fucking time. Washington boosts the second-most regressive tax code within the nation, which implies Washington overburdens poor individuals in comparison with the wealthy. In his current finances package deal, Governor Jay Inslee proposed a 1 % tax on a person’s wealth above $100 million, which might apply to three,400 individuals. That’s an much more bold tax than previous proposals by progressives Sen. Noel Body and Rep. My-Linh Thai who advocated for a 1 % tax on $250 million. Looks as if stars are aligning, however don’t underestimate wealthy individuals and their opposition. Democrats, regardless of their numbers, will nonetheless want loud help from lobbyists, activists, and web individuals.
A progressive tax on mansions: Inslee arrange the wealth tax as the large, splashy tax combat this yr, however there will definitely be others! Rep. Thai says progressives will reintroduce a tweak to the language of the state’s Actual Property Excise Tax (REET) this session. The plan is to vary REET, because the nerds name it, from a flat tax on actual property gross sales right into a progressive tax on the gross sales of McMansions. The income would pay for reasonably priced housing and different cool stuff. We’ll see how far it goes—Rep. April Berg launched the invoice final session, but it surely failed beneath strain from the actual property foyer.
Gun Tax: Rep. Thai’s managed to squeeze one other invoice onto her slate together with her plans for a gross sales tax on firearms and ammunition. Her invoice has the help of the Alliance for Gun Accountability. She’s nonetheless finding out what she’d like the cash to fund, nonetheless, her preliminary concepts embody one thing to help home violence survivors.
Housing and Renters’ Rights
Lease Stabilization: Somebody intends to introduce a invoice about lease stabilization this yr, and Rep. Emily Alvarado, Sen. Yasmin Trudeau, and Rep. Nicole Macri all plan to vigorously advocate to cap lease hikes. Initially Alvarado deliberate to be the invoice’s sponsor within the Home, however now she plans to hunt Joe Ngyuen’s seat within the State Senate as Ngyuen departs to be Governor Bob Ferguson’s Commerce Secretary. Whatever the musical chairs, Alvarado says she feels fairly assured in passage by way of the Home and the Senate. As we wrote final yr, three conservative Senate Democrats killed the invoice final session, leaving the likelihood for 40 % of state households to face destabilizing extreme lease will increase for an additional yr. However with two of these senate democrats now gone, the invoice’s advocates really feel fairly stable about its probabilities to at the least make it by way of the legislature. The invoice would set a ceiling for lease will increase at 7 %, require six months’ discover for landlords earlier than they transfer to presumably value you out of steady housing, restrict move-in charges (together with the deposit) to no greater than one month’s lease, and categorize month-to-month leases as the identical as lengthier ones. For instance, landlords would nonetheless want to offer six months’ discover for a lease enhance, even for month-to-month agreements. The invoice would delay new buildings from following these guidelines for at the least 10 years, which might profit builders permitting them to regulate rents and ensure they’re nonetheless cashing in on their investments.
$250 million to fund homelessness providers: To keep away from cuts to homeless providers within the coming years Michele Thomas of the Low Revenue Housing Alliance says we’ll want about $250 million from the State Legislature. A big chunk of the funding for these providers comes from charges for recording actual property exercise, and the upper rates of interest led to much less exercise, which led to much less income. If the housing market improves then we may even see that price ticket drop a little bit when the Legislature “must put the quantity down on paper,” Thomas says. However, if the Legislature fails to fill the funding hole we are able to anticipate to see depleted rental help funds, lowered shelter operations in addition to direct outreach packages, housing counseling, and a swath of different providers. All of which might be an enormous blow when the US Division of Housing and City Growth simply reported an 18.1 % enhance in homelessness final yr.
Lacking Center Housing If It By no means Missed: Urbanists are nonetheless driving the excessive from successful the so-called “Lacking Center Housing” invoice in 2023, which legalized fourplexes and sixplexes in a lot of the State. However since its passage, many Washington cities have introduced underwhelming development plans, together with the Metropolis of Seattle. In actual fact, the creator of the landmark invoice, Rep. Jessica Bateman, mentioned that though Seattle’s plan could comply with the letter of the regulation, the Mayor included some restrictions that “functionally make it infeasible to construct the very forms of housing that [the Legislature] mentioned cities must make authorized to construct.” To fight that, Bateman will reintroduce her Housing Accountability Act, which might require cities to display to the state that they’re absolutely in compliance with development legal guidelines. Failure to conform would set off what’s referred to as a “builder’s treatment,” which bars a Metropolis from denying a allow to any developer searching for to construct a housing choice of any dimension with some affordability necessities.
12 months of Housing 3.0: The Democrats billed final yr because the “12 months of Housing 2.0” and so they completely flopped. They did not go Bateman’s Housing Accountability Act, Rep. Andrew Barkis’ lot splitting invoice, and Rep. Julia Reed’s transit-oriented growth invoice. You may blame the State Senate for that. However Bateman, who will grow to be Senator Bateman subsequent yr, feels hopeful that the excessive turnover within the chamber will make it extra pleasant to pro-density laws. And it doesn’t damage to have Bateman, urbanism’s strongest soldier, combating from behind what was once enemy traces.
Staff’ Rights
Striiiiiike: Unions generally make concessions on the bargaining desk as a result of staff can’t afford to go on strike or keep on strike whereas their bosses can afford to carry out. Rep. Liz Berry says her Labor & Office Requirements Committee will rethink a invoice to pay unemployment checks to hanging and locked out staff, which might assist degree the taking part in discipline so staff can push for higher contracts. Talking of Unemployment Insurance coverage, the committee may also take into account extending these advantages to undocumented staff, which is able to assist these most weak staff keep away from homelessness in the event that they lose their jobs.
$25 to Thrive: Rep. Sharlett Mena believes Washingtonians ought to “work to stay, not stay to work,” so she’s after a serious enhance to the minimal wage, a attainable change to how the state indexes that wage, and necessary paid trip. On January 1, the state minimal wage climbed to $16.66. The quantity’s cursed not solely due to the triple sixes, however as a result of staff can’t fucking stay off of it! Mena needs to lift the wage to $25 an hour. She is aware of enterprise will come out of the woodwork to combat it, and he or she’s excited about serving to small companies modify. Nevertheless, Mena believes that for a lot of companies, a $25 wage is completely achievable.
Prison Justice and Police Accountability
Judicial dismissal: Rep. Darya Farivar plans to resurrect her invoice permitting judges to dismiss sure low-level legal costs—theft, legal trespass, and so on.—when defendants meet sure courtroom situations, together with agreeing to attend substance use or psychological well being therapy. The Home killed the invoice final yr after some sloppy protection by the Seattle Occasions Editorial Board and KING 5. Undaunted, Farivar intends to push laborious to make her colleagues see the significance of decreasing how many individuals with psychological sickness languish in jail on account of our cumbersome legal authorized system, when as a substitute they need to be funneled immediately into providers. The invoice might additionally assist avert extra federal fines for the state from the continued lack of providers for Trueblood class members. Below the proposed invoice, prosecutors should justify their pursuit of circumstances towards individuals for sure crimes, particularly individuals who dedicated the crime because of poverty, psychological sickness, or substance abuse. If a decide determines that addressing the foundation reason behind an individual’s problem is simpler than incarceration, they’d be empowered to set sure situations for the particular person to fulfill to have the costs towards them dismissed. Some prosecutors hate the invoice and argue it violates the separation of powers. Farivar, and a few judges, disagree. She hopes her invoice survives for extra dialogue this session.
Youth Proper to Counsel: Sen. Jesse Salomon understands how tough it’s for cops to learn legal guidelines and know what they imply, so he’s coming to their rescue with a invoice to make it simpler for them to understand the principles round a youth’s proper to talk to an lawyer earlier than regulation enforcement officers query them. The youth proper to counsel program launched in 2022 has confronted misinformation from regulation enforcement officers statewide. They’ve misrepresented how this system works, falsely suggesting it extends past its precise scope of merely prohibiting the questioning of minors who could have witnessed a criminal offense with out authorized counsel. As a way to make the regulation crystal clear to officers, Salomon has launched SB 5052, which might spell out that cops can query youth witnesses to crime. The caveat is that if within the strategy of interviewing the children, cops notice they could wish to examine them for attainable legal costs, then nothing the kid mentioned throughout the interview can be utilized towards them, at the least not till they go to trial when their statements can be utilized to indicate if their story has modified. The invoice looks like a great way for everybody to be completely satisfied, whereas stopping injustices just like the wrongful convictions of the Central Park 5, now referred to as the Exonerated 5.
Grant program for hiring cops: Gov. Ferguson spent his marketing campaign promising that if elected to the very best govt seat in all of the land he’d create a grant program to assist Washington rent extra cops. Republican State Senator Jeff Holy and Democratic Senator Manka Dhingra have come collectively to make Ferguson’s dream come true with SB 5060. Below the invoice, the state would pay as much as $125,000 per cop for 3 years, whereas requiring a 25 % contribution from an area jurisdiction. The grants might solely be used to cowl an officer’s wage and advantages. The whole price ticket on that invoice is $100 million for its first yr. Some huge cash contemplating Washington’s already falling crime charges and finances deficit.
Transgender individuals’s jail placement: Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen’s HB 1027 would stop the Washington Division of Corrections from putting transgender individuals in gender-affirming housing in the event that they’d dedicated a intercourse offense towards somebody of the identical gender (trans girls who’ve sexually assaulted cis girls, and trans males who’ve sexually assaulted cis males). As I wrote final month, this invoice would create a brand new normal for trans prisoners on the presumption that they’re extra harmful than their cis counterparts. As information reveals, prisons are terribly harmful locations for trans individuals. One survey discovered that 37 % of incarcerated trans individuals self-reported that they have been assaulted in jail, in contrast with 3.4 % of cis inmates. Jacobsen launched this invoice beneath a distinct quantity final yr and it went nowhere. It’s seemingly this invoice can also be doomed, however Jacobson retains submitting these assaults on trans individuals as a result of it fires up the bottom and retains the dialog alive as Republicans in different states efficiently peal away LGBTQ authorized protections.
Schooling
Totally funding particular schooling: Rep. Gerry Pollet plans to persist this session along with his invoice to totally fund particular schooling in Washington’s public colleges. The invoice has three elements: First it removes the state’s funding cap that limits what number of college students with disabilities in every faculty district the state can pay for to 16 % of the coed physique; second it will increase how a lot cash the state allocates to every particular person scholar with disabilities; and third it makes it simpler for colleges to entry further funds for college students who might have further assist, resembling requiring a bodily or speech therapist. Fixing this funding hole would go a protracted strategy to submitting faculty district finances deficits throughout the state, such because the one Seattle Public Faculties presently faces, Pollet says. Pollet plans to coordinate with Father or mother Trainer Associations to attempt to go these faculty finances payments early within the session as a result of with out some form of promised inflow of state money, he fears colleges could start saying workers lay offs and chopping packages on account of looming finances shortfalls. Pollet, alongside Rep. Lisa Callan, has managed to inch the cap greater over the past two periods, however Pollet needs to eliminate it utterly since about 95 % of faculty districts battle to adapt to the arbitrary restrict. As a way to pay for the invoice, Pollet has some concepts for potential progressive income sources, resembling closing a tax loophole that stops the state from taxing Wall Road investments by companies. In keeping with an estimate from a few years in the past, closing that loophole might conservatively increase greater than $300 million per yr. Pollet acknowledged which will cowl solely a portion of the roughly $3.6 billion in funding wanted over the subsequent 4 years to pay for particular schooling throughout the state. However the longer the state kicks this problem down the street, the extra native faculty districts endure and the upper probability of a lawsuit.
Isolation and restraint: Rep. Callan plans to reintroduce her invoice to restrict isolation and restraint of youngsters in colleges. Whereas the invoice handed the Home final session, it stalled within the Senate, with even some Democratic State Senators voting towards it. Nonetheless, Callan stays optimistic that some lawmakers could also be satisfied this session to at the least restrict these practices for youthful kids, resembling these in elementary faculty. That may be an excellent begin, contemplating colleges largely use restraint and isolation towards kids in Okay-5 colleges. Seven-year-olds in handcuffs actually aren’t an excellent look.
Healthcare
Mifepristone stockpile: It is a scary time to have a uterus. The Supreme Court docket struck down Roe V. Wade, handing the problem of abortion care to the states and making a two-tiered healthcare system. Purple states started working criminalizing abortion and blue states tried their darndest to guard it. With President-elect Donald Trump—absolutely in mattress with the Christo-Facists on the Heritage Basis—about to take workplace, even so-called abortion “sanctuaries” like Washington may very well be in hassle. Fortunate for us, Washington Democrats thought forward. Final yr, when a lawsuit threatened to limit entry to the abortion tablet mifepristone, outgoing Governor Jay Inslee created a inventory pile of the drug when he ordered the division of corrections to make use of its pharmacy license to purchase 30,000 doses of it. That lawsuit failed—thank God—however Inslee informed the Guardian in November that the state would hold the stockpile in case of a Trump victory. If Trump decides to implement the Comstock Act, banning the mailing and receiving of “obscene” matter together with abortion drugs, then it’d come in useful to have so many drugs available.
Ache meds for IUD procedures: The prospect of getting an IUD feels like a “Would You Fairly” straight from the creativeness of a uniquely evil 11-year-old who simply realized the place infants come from: Would you somewhat take a tablet each single day for the remainder of your reproductive life, and for those who overlook for lengthy sufficient or instantly lose entry beneath Republican rule you danger unplanned being pregnant OR would you save your self some nervousness and elect to endure medieval torture degree ache to shove a slightly-too-large antenna in your uterus to chase away being pregnant for 10 years? That calculation could grow to be simpler with HB 1077, which might require clinicians to debate ache administration with sufferers earlier than IUD insertions. Nonetheless, a affected person’s insurance coverage could not cowl the price of ache administration medicines. So the barrier will not be that docs ignore the common consensus that IUD insertion appears like getting stabbed, however somewhat that company pursuits prioritize revenue over affected person care. Bummer!
Anti-gender affirming care for teenagers: Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen has pre-filed HB 1038, her second anti trans invoice of the session, which bans puberty blockers, hormones and surgical care for teenagers who need and want them (trans youngsters), whereas carving out an exception for individuals who could not (intersex youngsters). Gender-affirming care for youngsters is secure, efficient and backed by each main medical group in the US; realistically, most children aren’t occurring hormones till they’re about 16 and really, only a few are eligible for surgical procedure earlier than their 18th birthday. Intersex care will be moral, however for years, surgeons have “corrected” atypical genitalia and lied to households in regards to the medical necessity of hormonal therapy, generally inflicting irreversible injury and trauma. Banning one whereas permitting the opposite achieves the objectives of limiting bodily autonomy and controlling what lawmakers like Jacobsen assume an individual’s gender must be.
