Hello Waters Meet Action Fund Partners!
We’re in the first week of the short session and things are moving fast and furiously. A few issues are rising to the top as we sift through bill introductions and the first week of committee hearings.
The big themes include:
- Immigration law enforcement
- Election regulations
- State energy regulations
- Progressive revenue proposals
Budget
This week there were multiple hearings on the Governor’s budget which he released in late-December. The budget includes cuts to various programs totaling $800 million. Ferguson also proposed spending $1 billion from the state’s rainy day fund to balance the overall budget.
The cuts include reductions to Early Learning, Higher Education, and social services. To his credit, Ferguson tried to offset the harm directly done to residents by cutting government funding for things like staff travel and reductions in central services. While those cuts won’t directly impact programs, they could have adverse impacts when it comes to accounting and contracting. All in all, the Governor’s budget was better than expected in many areas.
Key programs that were preserved in Ferguson’s budget include:
- Leaving all Community Reinvestment Project dollars intact
- Funding the Washington Migrant and Asylum-Seeker Support Project
- Legal defense dollars for immigrants and refugees
The Legislature held their annual hearings this week to address the Governor’s proposed budget. We expect to see several bills to offset federal cuts, including backfill funding for Medicaid.
Progressive Revenue
We could finally see progressive revenue — taxes that don’t disproportionately burden low-income people — passed this year. While it’s a short session, and an election year, the legislature and Governor Ferguson appear motivated to seek new revenue sources. There will likely be a handful of proposals introduced over the coming weeks, including income tax proposals and a tax increase on large corporations.
The proposal that is receiving the most coverage at the moment is a so-called “Millionaires Tax” endorsed by the Governor. The proposal would be:
- 9.9% tax on people with an annual gross income of over $1 million
- Impact less than 0.5% of residents in WA state
- Raise $3 billion annually
If passed in it’s current form, this proposal would not start to generate funds until 2029, making it a long-term solution to the budget woes, not a short-term fix. Senator Jamie Pedersen and Representative Joe Fitzgibbon are sponsoring this legislation and said it will be released soon.
Key Bills We’re Watching
Here are a few bills introduced this week that we’d like to bring to your attention. We are putting together a bill tracker to keep our partners updated on priority bills. We will share the link for that as soon as we are able to post it to our website.
HB 2515 – Addressing emerging large energy use facilities – This bill is directed largely at Data Centers and their energy and water use. It would include a clean energy mandate ensuring they have to use clean energy, new reporting requirements, and ensures labor agreements within data centers. As data centers expand and our resources decrease – this is a hot button issue that will have the environmental, business, and local communities split.
HB 2523 – Community Reinvestment Program (CRP) – Representative Hill has been working in partnership with the Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus to make significant improvements and implement guardrails on how the CRP dollars are implemented. This would mandate partnership between the Office of Equity and the Department of Commerce to ensure there is more oversight of the Department of Commerce.
HB 2497 – Addressing the rise in maltreatment‑related child fatalities or near fatalities by supporting families that have received a child welfare response. This bill enhances family support by focusing on providing services and intervention for families and updates systems to strengthen the states prevention and monitoring of child welfare incidents.