OLYMPIA — After a series of late nights underneath the Capitol dome, and with about 10 days to go in the legislative session, state lawmakers have advanced significant policies including measures to ban assault weapons, give police more leeway to chase suspects and allow more multifamily housing.
Many bills on high-profile issues like guns and abortion represent priorities for majority Democrats and Gov. Jay Inslee.
"This is shaping up to be an extremely productive session," Inslee said Thursday, pointing to legislation on guns and housing.
As of Thursday, Inslee had signed 84 bills and was expected to sign another 14 on Friday. The governor's office has estimated that there are about 465 bills total to act on, not including bills needed to put the budget into place.
On Wednesday night, lawmakers hit a key late-session deadline, where most bills had to pass both the House and Senate by that evening to move forward. However, as those who have experienced a session or two know, nothing is ever truly dead until the Legislature adjourns. Their last day is April 23.
Some important policy battles remain in these final days, including how much the state should penalize drug possession. And before they leave town, lawmakers need to hammer out the state budget, finding agreement on how much to spend on a host of areas, from housing to education.
House Republican Leader J.T. Wilcox said Tuesday he was less optimistic about housing than at the beginning of the session, saying many bills meant to ease housing development by the private sector had died or been "amended down to insignificance."
"We're putting hundreds of millions of tax dollars into building more houses, historic levels of investment, and at the same time, we are almost totally forgoing the opportunity for the private sector to be able to contribute a large number of new housing units," Wilcox said, "And that's a big mistake, both for the people that can't find homes now and for the taxpayers of Washington."
Potential new taxes are still on the table. Proposals to raise the 1% property tax cap and to increase a tax on real estate sales are still alive under the cutoff's revenue-raising exception.
Chambers unveiled their budget proposals last month, and are negotiating between themselves, with agreements likely to not emerge publicly until next week.
Some bills will need to be reconciled between the chambers, like Senate Bill 5536, which would determine criminal penalties for drug possession.
Washington's current law, which classifies possession of illicit drugs as a misdemeanor, expires in July. While the House has voted to maintain penalties for drug possession at their current misdemeanor status, the Senate passed a policy last month to raise the penalty to a gross misdemeanor.
House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said Wednesday she expected that bill to go to the conference process, where lawmakers from both chambers form a committee to negotiate the final policy. Inslee said Thursday that he supported maintaining a criminal sanction for drug possession.
Some bills that survived, if they became law, would:
Some bills that didn't make it would have:
