A 60-day legislative session can be a cruel thing if you’re hoping to see a bill passed.
Many policy ideas in the Washington Legislature met their end less than a month in, as they failed to pass the first key deadline on Wednesday to remain in play.
Passage of those that survived is far from assured. If bills cost money, they have to advance past another committee by the end of Monday. They’ll then have to pass out of the chamber they originated in by Feb. 17.
Bills deemed “necessary to implement the budget,” like those that include new taxes, are immune from the deadlines. Lawmakers can be creative in attaching this label.
Here are some of the measures that won’t become law in Washington this year.
4-day workweek
San Juan County has seen success with a 32-hour workweek for its government employees. But that model won’t be going statewide.
House Bill 2611 would’ve required employers to pay overtime for hours worked in excess of 32 per week. The food, hospitality and farm industries opposed the legislation.
It got a committee hearing last week, but no vote.
Homeschooling
Beginning at age 8, Washington parents have to file a signed declaration if they’re homeschooling their child.
Senate Bill 6261 looked to lower that age to 6.
Washington is the only state in the country that waits until age 8 to require this attestation, according to state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal. He told lawmakers that the legislation, which he requested, would provide the state with better data about where the state’s pupils are learning, especially as homeschooling increases in popularity.
In a committee hearing last week, homeschool advocates lambasted the bill, arguing it tells parents when it’s best for their children to begin formal schooling.
Its sponsor, Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island, said Wednesday that other bills took priority over this one during a short session.
A spokesperson for Reykdal said his agency was disappointed.
“This legislation has been considered several times over the last 15 years, and it unfortunately continues to get held up by ideology that doesn’t reflect what the bill actually is attempting to do,” spokesperson Katy Payne said in an email.
Hiring ICE agents
House Bill 2648 would’ve prohibited Washington police departments from bringing on officers who started jobs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Trump’s second term began. The legislation attempted to respond to concerns about training for new ICE agents brought on to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The legislation was set for a committee vote Tuesday, but the panel didn’t take action.
Read more: Proposed block on WA police hiring ICE agents fizzles out in Legislature
Children online
Lawmakers are making a concerted effort this year to find ways to protect children online, but some of their ideas have stalled.
Senate Bill 6111 looked to require parental consent for minors under age 17 to create social media accounts. The tech industry argued this would be an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The measure isn’t advancing.
House Bill 2400 would have aimed to set up safeguards for children who appear in monetized online content, like family vlogs. It would’ve allowed young adults to request deletion of videos they appeared in as children and required social media platforms to establish trust accounts for children shown in these videos, among other things. This bill is also kaput.
Rep. Kristine Reeves, D-Federal Way, the sponsor, has been working on these regulations for a few years. She said she’ll try again next year, with monthly workgroups before the 2027 session to hammer out the details.
“We’ve got a generation of students who this is all they’ve known,” Reeves said. “A lot of people are concerned about the impacts.”
Another bill with bipartisan support to restrict children’s access to pornography online didn’t pass out of committee either.
Legislation requested by Attorney General Nick Brown to set up social media safeguards is advancing. It would prohibit both addictive feeds for minors and sending push notifications to them overnight and during school hours.
Groceries
Last fall, Fred Meyer closed its store in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood, prompting the city to look at addressing “food deserts” like the one left by that closure.
“It has been devastating to see the impact of not having a major grocery store in our working-class community,” Rep. Darya Farivar, a Democrat who represents Lake City, told a House committee last month.
Because of this, Farivar pitched a trio of bills to address the issue. A proposal to ease restrictions on where grocery stores or pharmacies can be located has passed out of committee.
But two others haven’t moved forward. One would offer tax incentives to grocers in underserved communities. Another aimed to allow cities to establish publicly owned grocery stores in areas with food access concerns. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pitched public grocers as a way to address rising food costs, to much criticism.
Judicial appointments
Rep. Hunter Abell, R-Inchelium, renewed his call for reform to the judicial appointment process this week amid significant turnover on the state Supreme Court.
Three justices are departing the court this year. Gov. Bob Ferguson is in the process of choosing a replacement for one. The first-term governor has already appointed another justice, Colleen Melody. While appointees are still subject to election to retain their seats, they rarely lose.
Abell has pitched legislation to require state Senate confirmation for Supreme Court and appellate court appointments. The bills didn’t get a hearing this year or last.
“No single office should control who interprets our laws and Constitution,” Abell said in a statement. “Confirmation brings balance, accountability, and public trust back into the process.”
To fill Justice Barbara Madsen’s seat, the lawmaker is calling for the governor to appoint a jurist with bipartisan support who vows only to serve until the next general election.
Tribal representation
House Bill 2578 would have added four tribal members to the nine-member Fish and Wildlife Commission, though the proposal did not advance past a hearing this session. The bill would have required the governor to appoint eight Indigenous people in total, with two members from east of the Cascades, two from western Washington, and four alternates.
The appointed tribal officials would serve a four-year term and vote on policies the board oversees, such as wildlife conservation and hunting regulation.
“We are the modern tribes of Washington state and the modern government,” Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Anacortes, said in the bill’s hearing. “We can do better when we collaborate and we do better when we can engage.” Lekanoff indicated in the hearing that if the bill didn’t pass this year, she would try again in the future.
University encampments
House Bill 2589 would have prohibited encampments on college campuses in the state without authorization from school administrators. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mari Leavitt, D-University Place, argued it wasn’t specifically looking to stem the campus protests of recent years but simply codify into law the current practice at the state’s higher education institutions.
But after a hearing last week, it didn’t get a committee vote.
A separate Republican-backed bill would’ve taken financial aid from students found by a court to have caused damage at a college and forced them to repay aid they’d received. It aimed to respond to the occupation of an engineering building at the University of Washington last year that ended with broken equipment and arrests.
That legislation also didn’t advance.
Washington State Standard Reporter Aspen Ford contributed to this report.
This story was originally published by the Washington State Standard.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
