Dear friends and neighbors,
Hello from Olympia, where we’re nearly a quarter of the way through this year’s legislative session. Right now, our work is focused on committee hearings. These are the first stop for nearly every single bill. Hearings give everyone a chance to ask questions, propose amendments, and hear from constituents before moving a bill to the next step in the process.
We’ll be focused on committees until the policy and fiscal cutoffs later this month. These are the deadlines for bills to pass out of committee on their path to final passage and the governor’s desk (there’s a handy cheat-sheet for these cutoffs and the bill process here).
While we’re focused on committees, we have started to pass bills off the House floor. That includes legislation to help address the housing shortage and prevent backlogs for judicial hearings. I expect that we’ll have more updates in my next newsletter.
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On January 25th I was delighted to join the groundbreaking ceremony for the Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center’s new Cora Whitley Family Center in Hilltop. Once completed, this will double their early learning and daycare spaces and will create over 100 jobs. I have heard from many of you about how hard it is to find accessible and affordable child care. I know that this is a priority for many families in our community and I’m proud that the state was able to chip in over $3 million dollars to help make this expansion happen. Construction is currently expected to finish in January 2026.
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In my last newsletter I noted that while we are focused on our work in the state legislature, we would not hesitate to protect Washingtonians from attacks at the federal level. I think it is important in this moment to be incredibly clear about what that means.
Last week I put out a statement in support of our immigrant, refugee, and undocumented community members. Earlier this week I put out a statement about protecting the LGBTQ+ community, and particularly our transgender youth.
Statements are important; so is the action to back them up.
Over the last 10 years we have passed legislation supporting vulnerable members of our community, protecting our neighbors regardless of immigration status, ensuring that transgender youth can access life-saving health care, and much more. We will continue this work, and whenever we identify gaps in those protections, we will fill them swiftly. I was asked about this at the weekly media availability on Tuesday and want to share my response here as well. I hope that, in the chaos of federal announcements over the last 17 days, you are able to find some reassurance in knowing that at the state level, we have your back.
