Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Olympia have made it clear that public safety remains one of their top priorities, along with affordability, housing, and education. Newly elected Governor Bob Ferguson ran on a pro law enforcement platform and has vocally supported a focus on community safety and hiring more cops.
The Washington State Legislature is considering a large array of proposals to meet these goals, from subsidizing police officers to considering more gun control legislation to addressing the state’s public defense crisis. Here is a sampling of the most impactful public safety legislation under consideration in Olympia.
Police officer grant bill
One of the policies on which Ferguson ran was a police officer grant program, which he said would cost $100 million for the biennium.
In his inaugural address in mid-January, Ferguson thanked Republican Senator Jeff Holy (6th, Four Lakes) for his legislation proposing this program, saying, “That idea was a cornerstone of my campaign for Governor. Any budget I sign must include this funding.”
This new bill – SB 5060 – directs the Criminal Justice Training Commission to develop and implement this new grant program, which would cover up to 75% of newly hired law enforcement officers’ entry-level salaries and fringe benefits for a maximum of 36 months. The idea is that this funding would help defray the costs for municipalities of hiring and training new officers, which would theoretically help both large law enforcement agencies like the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and small rural departments to staff up.
However, at least in Seattle, the primary obstacle to hiring new officers is not money, as SPD’s hiring plan is already fully funded. SPD officers received a sizable raise in the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract approved last May, which does seem to have positively impacted hiring, with 23 more officers hired in 2024 than in 2023. But many applicants are not qualified to become officers, and there is a limit to how many spots SPD receives in the state’s police academies every year.
A substitute for SB 5060 was passed last week, which would allow the grant funds to be used for hiring peer counselors and behavioral health personnel working in co-response as well as sworn officers. It also requires agencies applying for the grants to be up-to-date with recommended policies and training, including use-of-force and trauma-informed training, and in compliance with the Keep Washington Working Act, which restricts the extent to which local law enforcement agencies can help in enforcing federal immigration laws.
“Community members do want to make sure that if we are utilizing $100 million, that we are doing it to ensure that very good law enforcement officers who want the training, who want to make sure they’re doing the right thing, that we are elevating that,” Senator Manka Dhingra, a co-sponsor of the bill, said during the bill’s executive session.
“It’s pleasant to actually have a governor that is focusing on the priorities of government,” Holy added in an apparent dig at former Governor Jay Inslee. “This is something that was a stated objective of [Ferguson’s] that I’m happy to be part of and accomplish.”
The bill will now move forward to the Ways & Means Committee. A companion bill, HB 1435, has been referred to Appropriations in the House. Both bills enjoy bipartisan support.
Public defense reform and funding
Also enjoying bipartisan support is Senate Bill 5404, which would tackle the public defense crisis that Washington State faces.
Across the United States, 37 states fully fund public defense, with another 11 using a mixture of state and county funds. But Washington State is currently paying a mere fraction of the cost of public defenders, which are constitutionally required to be provided. We are already seeing the consequence of this in public defense departments that are chronically understaffed, overworked, and dealing with high attrition rates.
The ACLU of Washington filed a class-action lawsuit against Yakima County in October because of inadequate public defense services being provided.
And public defense might be about to get a lot more expensive. The state’s Supreme Court is set to decide whether to change its caseload standards to match those issued by the Washington State Bar Association last March. A King County staff member estimated implementation of these standards could cost King County alone an extra $50 million annually.
Should the Supreme Court adopt some or all of the standards from the bar association, that would place additional pressure on state lawmakers to intervene.
The bill in question would require the state to foot the bill for 50% of current public defense costs and 100% of additional costs due to any caseload changes. The Seattle Times estimated this could cost the state $340 million over the next two years.
The bill has not yet been scheduled for a public hearing.
Judicial dismissal bill
Another bill not yet scheduled for a public hearing deals with judicial dismissal and is sponsored by Rep. Dariya Farivar (D-46th, Seattle). Farivar introduced a version of the bill last year, which is now known as the Public Supporting Accountability and Fast, Effective Treatment Act or the Public SAFE-T Act.
This bill is designed to allow judges to dismiss certain low-level criminal offenses if the defendants comply with getting treatment and services for conditions like substance use disorder and behavioral health issues.
The idea is that the SAFE-T Act would help address the problem of Washington’s inability to provide competency services to defendants who have been found incompetent to stand trial in a timely manner. The state has been struggling to stay in compliance with the Trueblood settlement, which set timelines for the state to meet in providing basic mental health services for this purpose. Failure to comply would result in the state having to pay additional fines.
“So many folks coming into the criminal legal system, particularly on misdemeanors, are entering due to symptoms of their disabilities,” Farivar said about last year’s bill. “This is especially important for us as we look at it I think in the context of the Trueblood lawsuit that’s been hanging over our heads for about a decade now. We’ve paid several hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on this.”
She mentioned that 11% of the people who fall under the Trueblood settlement come into the criminal legal system through being charged with misdemeanors.
“I think that this legislation provides important opportunities for us to actually divert folks into treatment and support, as opposed to seeing them continuously cycle through incarceration and crisis and homelessness, as many of these individuals who are struggling with behavioral health challenges do,” Farivar said.
Traffic safety for all bill
Rep. Chipalo Street (D-37th, Seattle) is sponsoring this year’s version of the “Traffic Safety for All” bill (HB 1512), which is a legislative priority of both the ACLU of Washington and the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability.
This bill aims to improve traffic safety in Washington State by focusing enforcement efforts on serious moving violations such as speeding, distracted driving, and DUIs. Non-moving violations such as minor maintenance issues or recently expired registration tags may only be enforced as a secondary action as opposed to being used as a justification for a traffic stop.
Bill sponsors hope that putting more resources into traffic infractions linked to serious crashes could help get a handle on rising traffic fatalities, and that this more targeted enforcement would also reduce the current racial disparity in traffic stops. Black, Indigenous, and Latino drivers are stopped for minor infractions and searched much more often than White drivers. For example, InvestigateWest recently reported that Washington State Patrol continues to stop and search Indigenous people at a rate five times greater than they do White people. Indigenous people are also most likely to receive a citation for non-moving violations.
The bill would also implement a grant program that would help low-income people comply with maintenance-related issues by funding initiatives like helmet and repair voucher programs and community education workshops.
“Prioritizing stops specifically for safety threats reduces racial disparity in overall traffic stops and improves safety for all Washington drivers,” the ACLU of Washington wrote.
This bill has been referred to the House’s Community Safety committee, but has yet to have a hearing.
Gun control bills
Democrats in the legislature have introduced several new gun control bills after having success passing a suite of such laws in 2023 and 2024.
Laws already passed include a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, a background check and waiting period for those purchasing guns, limitations of open carry in certain public spaces, and additional requirements for firearms dealers.
However, Democrats have their sights on adding additional measures. Farivar is sponsoring HB 1132, which would limit a person to buying one firearm every 30 days, as well as limiting ammunition purchases to 100 rounds of .50 caliber ammo or 1,000 rounds of all other types of ammo. Violations would be punished by revoking the dealer’s license.
“The need for action is urgent, and it is very clear,” Farivar said during the bill’s public hearing. “We hear about young people that are getting access to firearms, and inevitably tragedy follows. We hear about law enforcement responding to the scene where hundreds of shell casings have been strewn, which really reflects the ammunition stockpiling that’s happening. We have seen in firearms that are bought in bulk purchases that they’re actually twice as likely to become ghost guns, and they are 64% more likely to be used in crime. The data is very clear and it is frightening.”
Farivar brought up the success of other states passing similar legislation. “On the other hand, the states that have enacted similar measures, they’ve actually reduced their firearm trafficking by 50%,” she said.
Opponents of the bill said it would impede teaching self defense classes and competitive shooters from practicing and wondered why there wasn’t an exemption for people who hold a concealed pistol license.
In addition, Rep. Liz Berry (D-36th, Seattle) is sponsoring a bill that would essentially create a “permit to purchase” program in Washington State. Studies on similar programs in other states have shown they lead to decreased firearms-related deaths and homicides. They are also correlated with decreased suicides and shootings by police.
Rep. Beth Doglio (D-22nd, Olympia) is sponsoring a bill that would require people to safely store their firearms in their homes and vehicles. Failure to do so would be a civil infraction or a criminal infraction if the firearm ended up in the wrong hands or was used to commit a crime.
All three of these bills will be heard in an executive session of the Civil Rights & Judiciary committee on January 31.
Also in play is a gun tax brought forward by Rep. My-Linh Thai that would levy a 11% excise tax on sales of firearms and ammunition. This will bring in an estimated $16.3 million annually, which Thai would like to see spent on gun violence prevention services.
“I can sit here and share, with data upon data upon data, why firearm violence is a public health issue, not just in our state, but in our nation,” Thai said at the bill’s committee hearing.
She drew a parallel between taxing tobacco and alcohol and taxing gun purchases. “When we take actions around how we tax certain products that [are] harmful in an attempt to reduce the use of those harmful products to our society, especially to our youth, this is not an exception,” Thai said.
State budget deficit looms
A large budget deficit, estimated between $11 billion and 15 billion over the next four years, is defining the realm of possibility in Olympia during this legislative session. Lawmakers will have to agree upon some combination of cuts, delays, and new revenue sources in order to balance the budget, so passing anything that would significantly increase the deficit will be especially difficult.
The two big ticket items being discussed above are Ferguson’s pet law enforcement grant program, which will cost $100 million for the biennium, and tackling the state’s public defense crisis, which may cost around $340 million. By contrast, the gun control and judicial dismissal bills would likely have only modest costs associated with them. The cost of the Traffic Safety for All bill would also likely be relatively low, determined by how large a grant program it institutes. A similar bill in the Senate last year had a fiscal note of around $8 million per biennium.
Given how much Ferguson has emphasized the law enforcement grant program, as well as its bipartisan support, lawmakers will feel pressure to pass it. Whether they will feel equally compelled to address the crumbling public defense system, coming as it does with such a large price tag, is an open question.
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.