Click on the links below to learn more about bills currently being reviewed in the state legislature. You can “take action” on these most pressing bills by following the links below. Please sign in as individuals and not as representing the League of Women Voters. Thank you for taking action!

Priority Actions

Address Threats to Election Workers

Threatening election workers who are entrusted by the public to carry out elections has become a significant problem over the last few years. HB 1241, Addressing Harassment, makes threats to election workers a class C felony regardless of how the threat is delivered and allows for those election workers who are harassed to apply to the Address Confidentiality Program to protect their home addresses. HB 1241 passed the House with bipartisan support and has been referred to the Senate Law & Justice Committee. 

⚠️ Sign in PRO on HB 1241 here before 9:30 AM on January 29.

Improve Emergency Response to Inclement Weather Events

The legislature recognizes the increasing risks and threats to socially vulnerable people (including pets) from extreme weather events such as heat, cold, smoke, and flooding. HB 1012, Creating an Extreme Weather Response Grant Program, will provide funding for communities with a demonstrated lack of resources, to meet the costs of responding to community needs during such periods. This is for cities, counties, towns, and tribes that have emergency management organizations. 

⚠️ Sign in PRO on HB 1012 here before 12:30 PM on January 30.

Support Funding for Natural Lands

Conservation advocates are again asking for help to protect special places around Washington state. DNR’s trust land transfer (TLT) program has conserved nearly 130,000 acres of unique landscapes during its first 30 years of its existence. However, TLT needed to be revitalized after public support for the program dwindled and legislative appropriations dried up. In 2023, Washingtonians spoke up and successfully urged legislators to revitalize TLT as a conservation tool.

Now there is a unique opportunity to secure additional funding in the 2024 legislative session for more TLT projects using higher-than-expected carbon auction revenues from the state’s Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) account. NCS funding makes perfect sense for TLT because forests sequester carbon! 

⚠️Ask your legislators to support Capital Budget Funding for Trust Land Transfer Projects here.  

This is the week that policy bills must be passed from the policy committees in the chamber of origin. That means bills that are introduced in the House must be voted out of policy committees in the House and the same for the Senate. The deadline is Wednesday, January 31. Because that deadline is so soon, committees are frantically setting priorities about what to include in executive sessions for final committee votes. There is not enough time to hold hearings and executive sessions on the massive number of bills that have been filed, so this prioritization process may seem brutal to some.

After that, the fiscal and transportation committees have until February 5 to pass transportation policy, revenue and appropriations bills from the chamber of origin. Bills that miss these deadlines are considered dead. They may be introduced again next year as new bills with different numbers, but they will not proceed this year. The House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Ways and Means Committee have both scheduled meetings on Saturday, February 3, to facilitate moving bills they could not get to during the week.

Beginning February 6, there will be mostly action on the floor, which means that the House and Senate will be debating and passing bills in session, with fewer committee meetings—though committees will begin considering bills passed by the other chamber.

The weekly updates provided by Issue Chairs, and linked by issue below, give a status report on bills that League has been advocating for and watching. Make sure to complete the priority action alerts at the top of this newsletter to help get bills out of committee by Wednesday. Please also use the action alerts in the weekly reports or click on the yellow triangles below to be brought to our Action Alert webpage.

You can also participate in the Monday morning ACT meetings, at which speakers talk in more depth about specific issues. Register here.

Thank you for your interest and for taking action!

Looking Beyond Bill Deadlines and Toward the Budget

This is the fourth week of the 60-day 2024 Legislature in the second half of the biennium. There are only three days left for bills that are going to proceed to pass the policy committees in the respective chambers of origin—and only five days after that to pass the fiscal committees.

After the January 31 and February policy and fiscal cutoffs, respectively, the House and Senate will proceed to more floor action, where the full chamber votes on bills for final passage. This means that legislators are very busy and the session is very intense.

The exception to these cutoff dates is the budget. The House and Senate budget proposals will be considered after other bills have moved to the opposite chamber and the final budget will be the last action before the session ends on March 7.

The House and Senate will release their respective budgets within a couple of weeks. Hearings have been held on the Governor’s proposed budget, but the House and Senate will each have their own proposals for operating, capital and transportation budgets. They will each hold hearings on those and then when each chamber has passed theirs, there will be a reconciliation process so that both chambers adopt the same budgets—thereby creating the State’s final supplemental budget. 

LWVWA Legislative Issues From the 2024 Washington State Legislative Session

Click on an issue overview to learn more about the bills the League is following and "This Week's Updates" to read the issue chair's report on this past week. When a "⚠️" appears at the end of an issue, it indicates there are actions to take for this week. Click on the "⚠️" to be taken to our Action Alert page.

Democracy

Elections | Issue overview |⚠️

Money in Politics | Issue overview |⚠️

Education | Issue overview | Weekly update

Local News and Democracy | Issue overview |Weekly update |⚠️

Redistricting | Issue overview

Environment

Climate Crisis and Energy | Issue overview  |Weekly update |⚠️

Forests| Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Growth Management | Issue overview

Waste Diversion | Issue overview |Weekly update | ⚠️

Transportation | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Social and Economic Policy

Housing and Homelessness | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Healthcare | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Behavioral Health | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Children's Issues | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Early Care and Education of Young Children | Issue overview | Weekly update |⚠️

Criminal Justice | Issue overview |⚠️

Revenue | Issue overview |Weekly Update

League of Women Voters of Washington
1511 3rd Avenue, Suite 900, Seattle, WA 98101
206-622-8961 | 1-800-419-2596 | www.lwvwa.org

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization that encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.

The League of Women Voters of Washington
1511 Third Ave, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98101
United States

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