As if you didn’t have enough governments to worry about between the conservative majority at Seattle City Hall and the looming fascist takeover on the national level, the Washington State Legislature gavels to session on Monday, January 13. For the past few weeks, lawmakers have scrambled behind the scenes to prefile a bunch of bills, most of which will go nowhere. The news team at The Stranger, ever your north star for local, regional, and state politics, called around and found out what bills we should all follow during this session. We’re writing this a little early this year, so some of the bills have been prefiled, some haven’t, but we’ll keep updating this as we see those House Bills (HB) and Senate Bills (SB) numbers drop.  In return for this incredible public resource, we ask that you call or email your State House Representatives, your state Senator, and the Governor to advocate for the bills that resonate with you—you know, “during these troubling times,” as they say. by Hannah Krieg As if you didn’t have enough governments to worry about between the conservative majority at Seattle City Hall and the looming fascist takeover on the national level, the Washington State Legislature gavels to session on Monday, January 13. For the past few weeks, lawmakers have scrambled behind the scenes to prefile a bunch of bills, most of which will go nowhere. The news team at The Stranger, ever your north star for local, regional, and state politics, called around and found out what bills we should all follow during this session. We’re writing this a little early this year, so some of the bills have been prefiled, some haven’t, but we’ll keep updating this as we see those House Bills (HB) and Senate Bills (SB) numbers drop.  In return for this incredible public resource, we ask that you call or email your State House Representatives, your state Senator, and the Governor to advocate for the bills that resonate with you—you know, “during these troubling times,” as they say.   Economic Inequality and Progressive Taxation    Wealth Tax 2.0: It looks like this is the year for a wealth tax. Washington state must grapple with an unprecedented budget deficit, and Democrats expanded their majorities in both chambers—including some lefty champions such as Rep. Shaun Scott and Rep. Natasha Hill. It’s all coming together and it’s about fucking time. Washington boosts the second-most regressive tax code in the country, which means Washington overburdens poor people compared to the rich. In his recent budget package, Governor Jay Inslee proposed a 1 percent tax on an individual’s wealth above $100 million, which would apply to 3,400 people. That’s an even more ambitious tax than past proposals by progressives Sen. Noel Frame and Rep. My-Linh Thai who advocated for a 1 percent tax on $250 million. Seems like stars are aligning, but don’t underestimate rich people and their opposition. Democrats, despite their numbers, will still need loud support from lobbyists, activists, and internet people.  A progressive tax on mansions: Inslee set up the wealth tax as the big, splashy tax fight this year, but there will certainly be others! Rep. Thai says progressives will reintroduce a tweak to the language of the state’s Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) this session. The plan is to change REET, as the nerds call it, from a flat tax on real estate sales into a progressive tax on the sales of McMansions. The revenue would pay for affordable housing and other cool stuff. We’ll see how far it goes—Rep. April Berg introduced the bill last session, but it failed under pressure from the real estate lobby.  Gun Tax: Rep. Thai’s managed to squeeze another bill onto her slate with her plans for a sales tax on firearms and ammunition. Her bill has the support of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. She’s still sorting out what she’d like the money to fund, however, her initial ideas include something to support domestic violence survivors.    Housing and Renters’ Rights    Rent Stabilization: Someone intends to introduce a bill about rent stabilization this year, and Rep. Emily Alvarado, Sen. Yasmin Trudeau, and Rep. Nicole Macri all plan to vigorously advocate to cap rent hikes. Originally Alvarado planned to be the bill’s sponsor in the House, but now she plans to seek Joe Ngyuen’s seat in the State Senate as Ngyuen departs to be Governor Bob Ferguson’s Commerce Secretary. Regardless of the musical chairs, Alvarado says she feels pretty confident in passage through the House and the Senate. As we wrote last year, three conservative Senate Democrats killed the bill last session, leaving the possibility for 40 percent of state households to face destabilizing excessive rent increases for another year. But with two of those senate democrats now gone, the bill’s advocates feel pretty solid about its chances to at least make it through the legislature. The bill would set a ceiling for rent increases at 7 percent, require six months' notice for landlords before they move to possibly price you out of stable housing, limit move-in fees (including the deposit) to no higher than one month’s rent, and categorize month-to-month leases as the same as lengthier ones. For example, landlords would still need to give six months' notice for a rent increase, even for month-to-month agreements. The bill would delay new buildings from following these rules for at least 10 years, which would benefit developers allowing them to adjust rents and make sure they’re still profiting from their investments.  $250 million to fund homelessness services: To avoid cuts to homeless services in the coming years Michele Thomas of the Low Income Housing Alliance says we’ll need about $250 million from the State Legislature. A large chunk of the funding for these services comes from fees for recording real estate activity, and the higher interest rates led to less activity, which led to less revenue. If the housing market improves then we may see that price tag drop a little when the Legislature “needs to put the number down on paper,” Thomas says. But, if the Legislature fails to fill the funding gap we can expect to see depleted rental assistance funds, reduced shelter operations as well as direct outreach programs, housing counseling, and a swath of other services. All of which would be a huge blow when the US Department of Housing and Urban Development just reported an 18.1 percent increase in homelessness last year.  Missing Middle Housing If It Never Missed: Urbanists are still riding the high from winning the so-called “Missing Middle Housing” bill in 2023, which legalized fourplexes and sixplexes in most of the State. But since its passage, many Washington cities have presented underwhelming growth plans, including the City of Seattle. In fact, the author of the landmark bill, Rep. Jessica Bateman, said that although Seattle’s plan may follow the letter of the law, the Mayor included some restrictions that “functionally make it infeasible to build the very types of housing that [the Legislature] said cities have to make legal to build.” To combat that, Bateman will reintroduce her Housing Accountability Act, which would require cities to demonstrate to the state that they’re fully in compliance with growth laws. Failure to comply would trigger what's called a “builder's remedy,” which bars a City from denying a permit to any developer seeking to build a housing option of any size with some affordability requirements.  Year of Housing 3.0: The Democrats billed last year as the “Year of Housing 2.0” and they totally flopped. They failed to pass Bateman’s Housing Accountability Act, Rep. Andrew Barkis’ lot splitting bill, and Rep. Julia Reed’s transit-oriented development bill. You can blame the State Senate for that. But Bateman, who will become Senator Bateman next year, feels hopeful that the high turnover in the chamber will make it more friendly to pro-density legislation. And it doesn’t hurt to have Bateman, urbanism’s strongest soldier, fighting from behind what used to be enemy lines.    Workers’ Rights    Striiiiiike: Unions sometimes make concessions at the bargaining table because workers cannot afford to go on strike or stay on strike while their bosses can afford to hold out. Rep. Liz Berry says her Labor & Workplace Standards Committee will reconsider a bill to pay unemployment checks to striking and locked out workers, which would help level the playing field so workers can push for better contracts. Speaking of Unemployment Insurance, the committee will also consider extending those benefits to undocumented workers, which will help those most vulnerable workers avoid homelessness if they lose their jobs.  $25 to Thrive: Rep. Sharlett Mena believes Washingtonians should “work to live, not live to work,” so she’s after a major increase to the minimum wage, a possible change to how the state indexes that wage, and mandatory paid vacation. On January 1, the state minimum wage climbed to $16.66. The number’s cursed not only because of the triple sixes, but because workers can’t fucking live off of it! Mena wants to raise the wage to $25 an hour. She knows business will come out of the woodwork to fight it, and she’s interested in helping small businesses adjust. However, Mena believes that for many businesses, a $25 wage is entirely achievable.    Criminal Justice and Police Accountability    Judicial dismissal: Rep. Darya Farivar plans to resurrect her bill allowing judges to dismiss certain low-level criminal charges—theft, criminal trespass, etc.—when defendants meet certain court conditions, including agreeing to attend substance use or mental health treatment. The House killed the bill last year after some sloppy coverage by the Seattle Times Editorial Board and KING 5. Undaunted, Farivar intends to push hard to make her colleagues see the importance of reducing how many people with mental illness languish in jail due to our cumbersome criminal legal system, when instead they should be funneled directly into services. The bill could also help avert more federal fines for the state from the continued lack of services for Trueblood class members. Under the proposed bill, prosecutors must justify their pursuit of cases against people for certain crimes, especially people who committed the crime as a result of poverty, mental illness, or substance abuse. If a judge determines that addressing the root cause of a person's issue is more effective than incarceration, they’d be empowered to set certain conditions for the person to meet to have the charges against them dismissed. Some prosecutors hate the bill and argue it violates the separation of powers. Farivar, and some judges, disagree. She hopes her bill survives for more discussion this session.  Youth Right to Counsel: Sen. Jesse Salomon understands how difficult it is for cops to read laws and know what they mean, so he’s coming to their rescue with a bill to make it easier for them to comprehend the rules around a youth’s right to speak to an attorney before law enforcement officers question them. The youth right to counsel program launched in 2022 has faced misinformation from law enforcement officials statewide. They have misrepresented how the program works, falsely suggesting it extends beyond its actual scope of simply prohibiting the questioning of minors who may have witnessed a crime without legal counsel. In order to make the law crystal clear to officers, Salomon has introduced SB 5052, which would spell out that cops can question youth witnesses to crime. The caveat is that if in the process of interviewing the kids, cops realize they may want to investigate them for possible criminal charges, then nothing the child said during the interview can be used against them, at least not until they go to trial when their statements can be used to show if their story has changed. The bill seems like a good way for everyone to be happy, while preventing injustices like the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five.  Grant program for hiring cops: Gov. Ferguson spent his campaign promising that if elected to the highest executive seat in all the land he’d create a grant program to help Washington hire more cops. Republican State Senator Jeff Holy and Democratic Senator Manka Dhingra have come together to make Ferguson’s dream come true with SB 5060. Under the bill, the state would pay up to $125,000 per cop for three years, while requiring a 25 percent contribution from a local jurisdiction. The grants could only be used to cover an officer’s salary and benefits. The total price tag on that bill is $100 million for its first year. A lot of money considering Washington’s already falling crime rates and budget deficit.  Transgender people’s prison placement: Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen’s HB 1027 would prevent the Washington Department of Corrections from placing transgender people in gender-affirming housing if they’d committed a sex offense against someone of the same gender (trans women who’ve sexually assaulted cis women, and trans men who’ve sexually assaulted cis men). As I wrote last month, this bill would create a new standard for trans prisoners on the presumption that they are more dangerous than their cis counterparts. As data shows, prisons are extraordinarily dangerous places for trans people. One survey found that 37 percent of incarcerated trans people self-reported that they were assaulted in prison, compared with 3.4 percent of cis inmates. Jacobsen introduced this bill under a different number last year and it went nowhere. It’s likely this bill is also doomed, but Jacobson keeps filing these attacks on trans people because it fires up the base and keeps the conversation alive as Republicans in other states successfully peal away LGBTQ legal protections.    Education   Fully funding special education: Rep. Gerry Pollet plans to persist this session with his bill to fully fund special education in Washington’s public schools. The bill has three parts: First it removes the state’s funding cap that limits how many students with disabilities in each school district the state will pay for to 16 percent of the student body; second it increases how much money the state allocates to each individual student with disabilities; and third it makes it easier for schools to access additional funds for students who may need extra help, such as requiring a physical or speech therapist. Fixing this funding gap would go a long way to filing school district budget deficits across the state, such as the one Seattle Public Schools currently faces, Pollet says. Pollet plans to coordinate with Parent Teacher Associations to try to pass these school budget bills early in the session because without some sort of promised influx of state cash, he fears schools may begin announcing staff lay offs and cutting programs due to looming budget shortfalls. Pollet, alongside Rep. Lisa Callan, has managed to inch the cap higher over the last two sessions, but Pollet wants to do away with it completely since about 95 percent of school districts struggle to conform to the arbitrary limit. In order to pay for the bill, Pollet has some ideas for potential progressive revenue sources, such as closing a tax loophole that prevents the state from taxing Wall Street investments by businesses. According to an estimate from a couple of years ago, closing that loophole could conservatively raise more than $300 million per year. Pollet acknowledged that may cover only a portion of the roughly $3.6 billion in funding needed over the next four years to pay for special education across the state. But the longer the state kicks this issue down the road, the more local school districts suffer and the higher chance of a lawsuit. Isolation and restraint: Rep. Callan plans to reintroduce her bill to limit isolation and restraint of children in schools. While the bill passed the House last session, it stalled in the Senate, with even some Democratic State Senators voting against it. Still, Callan remains optimistic that some lawmakers may be convinced this session to at least limit these practices for younger children, such as those in elementary school. That would be a good start, considering schools mostly use restraint and isolation against children in K-5 schools. Seven-year-olds in handcuffs really aren't a good look.    Healthcare   Mifepristone stockpile: It's a scary time to have a uterus. The Supreme Court struck down Roe V. Wade, handing the issue of abortion care to the states and creating a two-tiered healthcare system. Red states got to work criminalizing abortion and blue states tried their darndest to protect it. With President-elect Donald Trump—fully in bed with the Christo-Facists at the Heritage Foundation—about to take office, even so-called abortion “sanctuaries” like Washington could be in trouble. Lucky for us, Washington Democrats thought ahead. Last year, when a lawsuit threatened to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, outgoing Governor Jay Inslee created a stock pile of the drug when he ordered the department of corrections to use its pharmacy license to buy 30,000 doses of it. That lawsuit failed—thank God—but Inslee told the Guardian in November that the state would keep the stockpile in case of a Trump victory. If Trump decides to enforce the Comstock Act, banning the mailing and receiving of “obscene” matter including abortion pills, then it might come in handy to have so many pills on hand.  Pain meds for IUD procedures: The prospect of getting an IUD sounds like a “Would You Rather” straight from the imagination of a uniquely evil 11-year-old who just learned where babies come from: Would you rather take a pill every single day for the rest of your reproductive life, and if you forget for long enough or suddenly lose access under Republican rule you risk unplanned pregnancy OR would you save yourself some anxiety and elect to endure medieval torture level pain to shove a slightly-too-large antenna in your uterus to ward off pregnancy for 10 years? That calculation may become easier with HB 1077, which would require clinicians to discuss pain management with patients before IUD insertions. Still, a patient's insurance may not cover the cost of pain management medications. So the barrier may not be that doctors ignore the universal consensus that IUD insertion feels like getting stabbed, but rather that corporate interests prioritize profit over patient care. Bummer!  Anti-gender affirming care for kids: Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen has pre-filed HB 1038, her second anti trans bill of the session, which bans puberty blockers, hormones and surgical care for kids who want and need them (trans kids), while carving out an exception for those who may not (intersex kids). Gender-affirming care for children is safe, effective and backed by every major medical organization in the United States; realistically, most kids aren’t going on hormones until they’re about 16 and very, very few are eligible for surgery before their 18th birthday. Intersex care can be ethical, but for years, surgeons have “corrected” atypical genitalia and lied to families about the medical necessity of hormonal treatment, sometimes causing irreversible damage and trauma. Banning one while allowing the other achieves the goals of restricting bodily autonomy and controlling what lawmakers like Jacobsen think a person’s gender should be.