Friends and neighbors,
First, I wanted to let you know that you are invited to join me for a community conversation on Saturday, April 13th, from 9 AM to 10 AM at the McGoldrick Library and Thursday, May 2nd, at the Steilacoom Library, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
This is an opportunity for you and your neighbors to tell me about the issues that matter most to you, review the 2024 legislative session, and learn about important funding coming to our community. I look forward to seeing you there!
📅 Date: Saturday, April 13
🕘 Time: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
📍 Location: McGoldrick Library meeting room, inside the AI Historical Society’s Archival Building, 9306 Otso Point Road, Anderson Island, WA 98303
📅 Date: Thursday, May 02
🕘 Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
📍 Location: Meeting room inside the Steilacoom Library, 2950 Steilacoom Blvd. Steilacoom, WA 98388
Working toward economic prosperity
Housing costs, inflation, lack of family-wage jobs, and access to career training all impact our ability to realize our dreams of economic prosperity. This legislative session, we continued our work to improve access to stronger financial futures for all residents of our communities. Here are some highlights.
- The legislature made critical improvements to the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) program through House Bill 1895. These changes include streamlining the application process by simplifying income verification and eliminating unnecessary delays.
- In the past, we addressed drug costs for medications like insulin. This year, House Bill HB 1979 capped the costs of inhalers and epinephrine at $35 for a 30-day supply of inhaler corticosteroids & two epi-pens.
- The sale of a mobile home park can uproot lives and cause huge financial and housing difficulties. Senate Bill 6059 revises requirements for notice of opportunity to compete to purchase a manufactured housing community. This will provide homeowners with increased opportunities to purchase their manufactured home lot, creating more stability. It also allows homeowners who receive relocation assistance from an outside source to receive the maximum amount of assistance under the Mobile Home Relocation Assistance Program.
- House Bill 2007 ends the arbitrary 60-month cap on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families when the family has an infant at home. As we work to help people get out of poverty and become self-sufficient, we shouldn’t arbitrarily be taking assistance away when it is still needed.
- The legislature created the Economic Security for All program through House Bill 2230. This will promote economic inclusion and self-sufficiency for people with low incomes by allocating grants to families and individuals below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (less than $30,120 for individuals or $62,400 for a family of four). These grants will help families in our communities work toward more self-sufficiency, focusing especially on supporting people of color and rural residents.
- We passed House Bill 1975, which relieves employees from paying interest on pandemic relief unemployment insurance benefits they received. We all know how challenging pandemic relief unemployment was. This goes a long way toward alleviating some of those problems.
- The final bill I would like to mention is House Bill 1985 which gives an important cost of living increase to our retired public employees. I worked hard to get over the finish line and am glad to see these retired public servants get some relief.
Finally, I would like to highlight some ways our budgets invested in our shared prosperity. Those include:
- $64 million for food assistance for seniors, summer EBT for kids, and food banks.
- $13 million for economic development and small business support.
- $8 million digital equity and broadband access.
- $45 million for increased participation for free student meals.
Thank you again for staying engaged with this process. Government works best when there is a robust conversation between residents and the people who represent them. I look forward to continuing our conversations soon. Please reach out to my office if you can’t make the community conversations and have questions, comments, or concerns.
Best regards,
Rep. Mari Leavitt