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March 19, 2025

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

The 2025 legislative session is heading into its last several weeks, with the final gavel scheduled for April 27. Last week, was House of Origin cutoff, when all bills had to be passed out of their original chamber to stay alive, except for bills considered necessary to implement the budget. We spent hours debating and passing bills. Click here for a recap on some of the biggest issues we considered.

Update On My Legislation

I’m pleased to report that the House unanimously passed House Bill 1121, which would allow 16- or 17-year-old minors to work as many hours during the school year as they can during summer, school vacations, or holidays if they meet certain requirements.

Washington needs workforce development in the trades, and career and technical education programs create critical pathways for kids interested in these professions. Kids can get lost in high school without a focus, and CTE programs help provide that focus. Many kids want to work more hours, and the state should encourage capable students ready to work. This would give these kids valuable on-the-job training and education and help our workforce. The bill is now being considered in the Senate.

Unfortunately, despite strong approval from the House Education Committee, majority party leadership chose not to advance House Bill 1289. This bill would require the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to create a voluntary, confidential online survey for parents or guardians to fill out when transferring or withdrawing a student from a public school or school district. The survey would be used to collect data about why parents and guardians transfer or withdraw students from public schools and use it to better meet students’ and their parents’ or guardians’ needs. Unfortunately, HB 1289 is dead for this session.

Good and Bad Bills Still Alive

So far, both chambers have combined to pass 535 bills this session. We’re now back in our committees hearing and voting on all the policies from the Senate. Here are some good and bad House bills that are still alive.

Good Republican Bills That Advanced

• House Bill 1108 – Tackles the housing crisis head-on by uniting industry experts and community voices in a task force to pinpoint why homes and rentals are so expensive.
• House Bill 1096 – Authorizes lot splitting—dividing a single property into smaller lots—enabling homeowners to build affordable homes, boosting housing supply.
• House Bill 1285 – Requires all high school students, beginning with the class of 2031, to meet state financial education standards to graduate, equipping them with essential life skills like budgeting, taxes, and managing debt.
• House Bill 1414 – Directs the CTE task force to identify employment barriers for 16- and 17-year-old students while proposing better job training, certification, and hiring rules.
• House Bill 1457 – Requires tamper-resistant electronic monitoring for sexually violent predators on conditional release, giving communities greater safety and security while providing clear evidence of compliance or violations.
• House Bill 1648 – Tackles Washington’s child care crisis by extending qualification timelines for providers, recognizing experience-based competency, and removing unnecessary barriers that push skilled professionals out of the workforce.

Bad Democrat Bills Still Alive

• House Bill 1163 – Forces law-abiding citizens to purchase a permit to buy a firearm, creating additional barriers to gun ownership, and infringing upon individual freedoms.
• House Bill 1217– Imposes rent control, which will discourage investment, slow down new construction, and worsen Washington’s housing crisis by driving capital to neighboring states with more flexible policies, while imposing arbitrary caps that don’t account for rising operational costs, ultimately hurting both housing providers and tenants.
• House Bill 1296– Undermines the Parent’s Rights Initiative passed by the Legislature last year, erodes the trust between parents and schools, jeopardizes federal funding, and dishonors the will of hundreds of thousands who fought for Initiative 2081.
• House Bill 1319– Imposes a 1% annual tax on worldwide financial assets over $100 million, driving wealthy residents and their investments out of Washington, creating costly administrative burdens, inviting legal challenges, and destabilizing the state’s economy, all while failing to address the root causes of wealth inequality.
• House Bill 1386 – Imposes an additional 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition, unfairly burdening law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to address the root causes of crime.
• House Bill 1531 – Requires state and local health officials’ response to public health to abide by the “best available science” and voids any statutes, ordinances, rules, or policies that prohibit the implementation and promotion of such measures.

Bad Bills That Died

Meanwhile, with your help, House Republicans also managed to stop numerous bad bills from moving forward, including:

• House Bill 1125 – Undermines accountability by empowering activist judges to resentence convicted criminals, potentially jeopardizing public safety and retraumatizing victims.
• House Bill 1128 – Sets up an unelected Childcare Workforce Standards Board to require minimum standards for compensation, working conditions, training, and other standards that will drastically increase the cost of childcare.
• House Bill 1146 – Forces cash-strapped counties to divert resources from law enforcement and public safety to create voting plans for jails and state hospitals and allows the Attorney General to sue them for noncompliance.
• House Bill 1178 – Weakens sentencing for drug offenses in school zones, reduces accountability for gang-related crimes involving minors, and makes it easier for criminals with firearms and deadly weapons to get early release, ultimately putting communities at greater risk and undermining public safety.
• House Bill 1189 – Allows individuals with criminal convictions to volunteer in schools with regular, unsupervised access to children, exposing students to preventable risks.
• House Bill 1339 – Creates a chaotic nightmare for county auditors, leads to voter confusion, increased ballot fatigue, and unfairly benefits incumbents while overshadowing local issues, all at the cost of election integrity and effective voter engagement. Democratic Secretary of State Hobbs is opposed.
• House Bill 1380 – Strips cities of their ability to clear dangerous encampments, opens the floodgates to costly lawsuits, overrides local voters, and makes communities less safe—without offering real solutions to homelessness.
• House Bill 1448 – Increases costs, causes logistical nightmares, and confuses voters while disenfranchising those who struggle to understand it and undermining trust in our electoral system.

Budget Work Still to Come

As this session winds down, we still have much work to do, especially on the state’s three budgets: operating, transportation, and capital. The state is dealing with a large budget shortfall, but the fact is, we still have more revenue this year than we did last year. We’re also expected to have more next year than this year. The problem is state government has not budgeted for a rainy day and overspent based on previous forecasts. I will continue to update you on all three of the state’s budgets as we move forward in the process.

Thank You and Please Continue Reaching Out

Thank you for your continued support. If I can assist you in any way, please reach out to me using the contact information below. It’s an honor to serve you.

Stephanie McClintock