The Washington State Legislature has reached the midpoint of its 2025 session, with lawmakers working long hours on the floor as they approach the March 12 deadline for bills to pass out of their chambers of origin. As of this week, 1,051 House Bills have been introduced, and 519 have made it to the Rules Committee for potential consideration by the full House. In the Senate, 805 bills have been introduced, with 271 awaiting a potential Senate vote.
As with the previous legislative deadlines, bills that do not clear this stage of the process are generally considered dead for the session, unless deemed “necessary to implement the budget” (NTIB). However, it’s worth noting that no bill is entirely off the table until the legislature’s final adjournment.
So far, two bills LSW is monitoring have cleared their respective chambers:
- HB 1483, Right to Repair, passed the House 94-1. While there is language exempting medical devices, AdvaMed would like to see it made clearer. We will be working to clarify that provision when the bill is heard in the Senate.
- SB 5284, plastics/recycling, passed out of the Senate by a vote of 27-22. This is the so-called producer responsibility bill, and it includes exemptions sought by BIO and LSW for FDA regulated products including vaccines and biologics.
On the heels of Governor Ferguson’s budget cut exercise last week, another effort in the budget and tax space launched Monday. People for an Affordable Washington, a new PAC, placed a banner ad on the Seattle Times website highlighting increased government spending without seeing progress on education, homelessness, housing affordability, or the rising cost of living.
Read more about the state budget, including the state spending choices the led to our current $12-$15B revenue shortfall, here.
While Governor Ferguson has laid out his priority for government efficiency over increased taxes, legislative leaders have made it clear that revenue options remain on the table. In December, Senate Democrats inadvertently released the options they are considering, including:
- Removing the cap on payroll taxes,
- Additional B&O tax surcharge on employers with >$500M income,
- Removing the $9M B&O tax surcharge cap on advanced computing surcharge,
- Implementing a 1% wealth tax on taxpayers with more than $50M in financial assets,
- Increasing the capital gains tax,
- Others include raising the property tax levy lid, increasing the Real Estate Excise Tax, removing the sales tax exemption on storage units, and implementing a new sales tax on firearms and ammunition.
Legislation proposing any of these options would be considered NTIB and not subject to the typical cutoff deadlines, but it remains unclear which bills already introduced in the House and Senate could move forward, and more yet could be introduced.
We are working to educate lawmakers about how many of these options would not simply hit “big businesses,” but could have a devastating impact on Washington’s ecosystem of small and mid-size life sciences companies.
Have questions, comments, or concerns about these bills or any other pending legislation? Get in touch with LSW’s Public Affairs Manager, Curtis Knapp.