The 5 Worst Bills From the 2024 WA State Legislative Session

The Washington State Legislature's 2024 session has come to a close, and we look back at some of the over 1,000 bills that were submitted.

   GOP Senator John Braun provided a list of the worst 5 bills

Some of them did not pass, others did.  According to Republican legislators, the worst ones included:

• Senate Bill 5770.  Legislators were able to kill this one, but it did not pass. It would have raised the property tax increase threshold from 1 percent annually to 3 percent. It would have also approved a 3 percent increase to fund emergency services and other projects.
• House Bill 1589.  This bill allows the state's largest utility, Puget Sound Energy, to submit plans and changes to the Utilities and Transportation Commission without customer comment or legislative approval. According to Braun:
• "It also allows PSE to charge higher rates to cover the extra costs of complying with the cap-and-tax program in the "Climate Commitment Act." YOU will bear the cost of converting your home or rental properties from natural gas to electric, which will fall somewhere between $32,000 to $70,000. Many families will not have the kind of money needed to perform the conversions. Financial assistance is available, but only for the lowest-income families, and it can't be used to replace gas appliances."  This bill DID pass.
• Senate Bill 5462:  (passed)  According to Braun:  "Referred to as the "inclusive learning" bill, this mandates the inclusion of certain information in the K-12 public school curriculum. My problem with this bill centers around my opposition to the Legislature acting as a school board for all 295 school districts in our state. Parents, teachers and school administrators should have the ability to determine if this material is taught in their district."
• Senate Bill 5241: (did not pass)   This bill would have given the Attorney General's Office sole oversight to approve or deny hospital or medical care mergers. According to Braun: "The significant cost burden it would have created for providers around the state would be passed along to patients. The agenda behind this bill would have the effect of undercutting Catholic health institutions, which provide high-quality health care, because they don't provide certain types of care that violate their ethical and religious directives."
• Senate Bill 5777 (did not pass)  This was the bill that would have allowed striking workers to claim unemployment. It would have provided taxpayer-funded unemployment through ESD for striking workers. It never made it out of Committee.