2026 Legislative Session

Olympia Watch is WashCOG’s weekly report on what’s happening in the state legislature and your guide to action.

Here’s the 2026 edition of the Washington Coalition for Open Government’s weekly Olympia Watch. We’ll be informing readers each Monday about legislation we’re tracking at the state capitol that could affect government transparency. Please let us know if you learn about transparency-related legislation we are not covering here. Contact info@washcog.org.

Feb. 2-5, 2026

Please sign in ‘con’ on ‘modernization’ bill, ‘pro’ on news funding

With deadlines this week for all bills to pass a committee or die for the year, the coalition is focused on one bill that could do a lot of harm to government transparency, and one that could improve the situation. We’d love for you to help our cause by weighing in with the legislative committees considering these bills. (See instructions below for how to register your support for transparency!)

Bill to “modernize” Public Records Act looks aimed at weakening it instead

When Rep. Skyler Rude told WashCOG that he was filing a bill to create a work group to recommend improvements in the Public Records Act and asked us to participate, we of course agreed. That’s our wheelhouse, after all.

So we were quite disappointed when Rep. Rude’s last-minute bill emerged last week. All we had to do was look at the proposed legislative findings. Particularly the sentence that says the Legislature “finds that misuse of the public records act for frivolous, retaliatory, or  harassing purposes strains limited public resources” and causes other problems.

We’re here to tell you that as a nonprofit group that focuses hard on how the Public Records Act is administered, we are still waiting for any evidence that “frivolous, retaliatory or harassing” PRA requests are anything but the extreme minority. Where is the data?

House Bill 2661 also speaks of “legitimate purposes” for filing a request under the PRA. The people of Washington, in voting by a large margin to approve the forerunner of the PRA, did not declare that such requests can be filed only for “legitimate purposes.” Who is to decide what is a “legitimate purpose?” This is a slippery slope to where government decides what’s convenient to release and what is not.

The bill would set up a study group dominated by the kinds of agencies that must respond to PRA requests. Their job: to find ways to “modernize” the PRA and “deter abuse.” Representatives of the people, journalists and lawyers who often file PRA requests would be in the minority. The whole process seems skewed to make obtaining information from state and local governments more difficult.

Considering how this legislation seems aimed at weakening the PRA, we ask you to please sign in “con” on House Bill 2661, which comes before the House State Government & Tribal Affairs Committee. The committee meets at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3. Typically, comments must be filed at least one hour before the start of the meeting.

Bill to fund local news reporting up for a hearing

WashCOG is all about fighting for government transparency because citizens need to know what their government is doing when they head to the ballot box. It’s a basic tenet of our democracy that government is carried out with the consent of the governed. And the governed must be informed to make smart choices when selecting leaders.

It's for that reason that WashCOG is supporting a bill that would help preserve local news reporting in Washington. Coverage by the news media is a major path for government transparency to translate into an informed electorate. Yet the news media, for reasons related mostly to a business model broken by the dominance of internet companies like Google and Meta, already is faltering and could ultimately go away.

Senate Bill 5400 would raise $20 million a year by taxing internet companies, with the likes of Tik Tok and Microsoft paying no more than $6 million each annually. They can afford that. And consider that they now use news stories to attract readers to their sites, but don’t pay anything to the news companies that produce local journalism.

The money raised would support newsroom jobs around the state. One provision under consideration would funnel $1 million to continue support for a journalism fellowship program run out of Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication that aims to place a journalist in each of Washington’s 39 counties. It’s do or die for the Murrow program; last year legislators voted to cut off the funding.

SB 5400’s sponsor. Sen. Marco Liias of Snohomish County, told Brier Dudley of The Seattle Times that prospects for the bill aren’t great, “but we’ve got to keep the issue alive and in front of people to keep the momentum going.”

SB 5400 will be heard Thursday, Feb. 4 at 1:30 p.m. by the Senate Ways & Means Committee. Please give the bill a boost by signing in “pro” here. Typically comments must be filed at least one hour before the start of the meeting.

Jan. 26-30, 2026

With less than two weeks before deadlines for bills to pass out of at least one committee or die for 2026, legislators plan this week to take up a huge number of bills. Here are the transparency-related hearings the Washington Coalition for Open Government will be tracking this week:

One House bill and one Senate bill seek to amend the Open Public Meetings Act so that city and county councils and commissions can meet during emergencies without the usual protections ensuring that the public can see the public’s business being done. Those protections involve advance notice to the public, among other provisions. But HB 2520 is dangerous, while SB 6000 has a lot more safeguards. The House bill simply says commissions can meet during emergencies, without defining what “emergency” means. Worse, it allows binding action to be taken. The Senate bill specifies that it is only for emergencies formally declared by state or federal authorities in response to a natural disaster. The Senate bill also forbids taking final action on ordinances or other measures. WashCOG opposes the House bill, which is scheduled for consideration by the House State Government & Tribal Relations Committee on Wednesday. The Senate bill comes up Friday in the Senate State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections Committee.

Bills in both chambers seek what sounds to WashCOG like sweeping exemptions to the Public Records Act for a one-stop online portal for residents to interact with various state agencies that is being built by Washington Technology Solutions. That’s a state agency that operates the state’s core technology infrastructure. We’re opposed to these bills because while they say they are to protect “individual privacy,” the provisions appear to cover lots of information that could be relevant to a public-records requester, including the names of people who use the system. We are concerned that the word “all” appears repeatedly throughout this bill and indicates expansive exemptions that could conceivably protect just about anything that is entered into a centralized system being created. HB 2491 has a hearing Tuesday before the House State Government & Tribal Relations Committee, while SB 6164 will be considered Friday by the State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections Committee.

The Public Records Act currently instructs agencies not to release information requested under the act for “commercial purposes.” HB 2391, which is to be considered Tuesday in the House State Government & Tribal Relations Committee, would add “solicitation or fundraising purposes.” It defines solicitation as “the act or an instance of requesting or seeking to obtain something.” That is extremely broad language. It could, for instance, conceivably prohibit a news reporter from using the PRA to get lists of individuals whom the journalist would then seek to interview. The legislation contains an exception for labor unions. WashCOG is opposed to the legislation in its current form and would need to hear additional justifications to move off our position. There is no bill analysis that would further shed light on why this legislation was filed.

HB 2333, nicknamed the “political violence bill” by some, seeks to protect home addresses of office holders and candidates, and a broad array of other government officials. Following the horrific shootings of Minnesota legislators and other incidents involving threats to legislators here in Washington, the motivation for filing this legislation is understandable. The bill summary explains that it would add protections against “threats or harassment of elected officials by providing for increased penalties for the crime of harassment,” and “expands the Address Confidentiality Program to elected officials,” along with additional security measures “to address dangers or threats that would not exist but for the individual's status or duties as an elected official.” It also “prohibits the disclosure of the residential address of elected officials, candidates, criminal justice participants, election officials, and those who reside with any such person, contained in campaign finance reports or records, property records, voter registration rolls, and candidate declarations.” WashCOG does not believe this will be effective, because those who want to attack officials at their homes have lots of ways to find those addresses. The shooter in the Minnesota case, for example, found the addresses through commercially available people finders. WashCOG is remaining neutral on this legislation, which will be heard Tuesday in the State Government & Tribal Relations Committee, but we can foresee the possibility of unintended consequences. The state auditor and county clerks have expressed concerns that the bill is simply not workable in practice.

HB 2356 would make it possible for the next of kin of a murder victim or, in the case of juveniles, the child’s legal guardian, to apply to a court to make the name of the victim exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act. This sounds like a terrible idea. WashCOG is opposed. The public should know who has fallen victim to murder. Period. This will be heard Wednesday in the House State Government & Tribal Relations Committee.

On Tuesday, the Senate Law & Justice Committee takes up SB 6239, which would force anyone who wants to sue state agencies or local governments to first submit to an arbitration process that is not subject to the Washington Constitution's guarantee of open administration of justice. This would effectively move the process out of the public eye at least in its early stages, and potentially forever in the case of plaintiffs who settle cases without going to an open public court. Think about the kinds of suits that have exposed injustices and bungling bureaucracies, such as those involving people who die in prison and abused foster children. The list goes on. We expect a lot of opposition, but note that it’s backed strongly by lobbies for the city and county governments. WashCOG opposes this measure.

HB1692, “Exempting Certain Data Related to American Indians, Alaskan natives and Indian Tribes From Public Inspection and Copying,” is on the Tuesday agenda of the House State Government & Tribal Relations. The bill summary says it would exempt from the Public Records Act information “prepared, obtained, used, or retained by a local health jurisdiction or a named entity,” creating the impression that this is about health records. But the list of “named entities” is quite long, and the bill does not specify that this is about health information. The bill summary notes that there are already hundreds of exemptions to the PRA. WashCOG is not prepared to support this legislation. Until we learn more about the need for this additional PRA exemption, we are opposed.

SB 6049 would provide a PRA exemption for “all individual survey responses voluntarily provided by state employee, vendor, or contractor in response to a voluntary survey administered by or on behalf of a public agency for the purposes of engagement and improving state government.” The bill will be heard Friday in the Senate State  Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections Committee. WashCOG has not yet taken a position on this legislation.

 Jan. 19-23, 2026

As the 2026 legislative moves into rapid-fire consideration of legislation in this short even-year session, several bills affecting the Public Records Act are set to be considered by a Senate committee. Here are some bills we expect to be heard this week:

SB 5892, which is scheduled for a public hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 20 and a vote on Friday at the Senate State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections Committee, would make it a crime for state or local officials to release personal identifying information about voters from the statewide voter election database. The bill, requested by Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, would require all information requests about voter identity to be routed through his office. It directs county elections offices to refer such requests to the Secretary of State’s Office. Republicans have raised concerns that it could make it more difficult for the federal Department of Justice to inquire into the workings of local and state elections. That effort has resulted in the DOJ suing Washington and other states for failing to hand over their voter registration lists. WashCOG has not taken a position on this legislation.

SB 6081 seeks to exempt from the Public Records Act information maintained by the state that would indicate whether a person has transitioned from one sex to another. It’s opposed by the Conservative Ladies of Washington. It has a number of Senate co-sponsors, and the prime sponsor is Senate President Jamie Pedersen. The bill is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Committee on State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections beginning at 1:30 p.m.  Tuesday, and a vote in the same committee at its 10:30 a.m. session on Friday. WashCOG has not taken a position on this legislation.

SB 6123, which appears to expand a Public Records Act exemption protecting state employees’ personal information to include employees of local government, will be considered this week by the Senate Committee on State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections beginning at 10:30 a.m. Friday. WashCOG has not taken a position on this legislation, and we are still seeking to understand its implications and reach.

Jan. 12-16, 2026

As the 2026 session begins, we’ve got a list of 13 bills held over from 2025 and (at last count) 11 bills or emerging bills for 2026.  We’ll be keeping you up to date each Monday on what we expect to come up during the week, until the end of the legislative session in March. Here are bills we expect to testify on this week:

●  SB 5683 comes up Tuesday at the Senate State Government Committee. It would prevent destruction of important historical records of the treatment of people with disabilities in state institutions. It would make the records public if they’re 75-plus years old, even if they would otherwise be exempt as health/patient records. This continues the work of Stacy Dym, executive director of The Arc of Washington, and Tim Gerlitz, superintendent of Lakeland Village, a state facility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dym and Gerlitz worked to preserve records at Lakeland Village, which was established in 1914. They were recognized for their work with a Key Award in 2024 for their work in this arena. More details here.

●  HB 2333 - On Wednesday, the House State Government & Tribal Affairs Committee takes up what we expect to be controversial legislation proposed to hide the home addresses of legislators in order to better ensure their safety.  This comes in the wake of assassinations of state legislators in Minnesota.

●  HB 2244 - At the same State Government Committee meeting on Wednesday, HB 2244 will be considered. It would implement at least some of the pro-transparency recommendations of the legislatively appointed Sunshine Committee, which gathered together stakeholders in government and civil society, among others, to ferret out unwarranted exemptions to the Public Records Act.

Please let us know if you learn about transparency-related legislation we are not covering here.