We are now in the second half of the 2023 legislative session! Last Wednesday, March 8th, was the last day for bills to get a floor vote in their respective chamber and to be voted out. It is a critical period in session, where 90% of bills have died by the time this cutoff takes place, and it dictates how the rest of session will go.

We lost a lot of good bills this session and we want to give a shout-out to our allies who led the valiant effort! Passing bills can oftentimes be a multi-year struggle, and we have been there. We are fortunate that Futurewise’s bills are in the 10% that made it though. The fight for our future continues!

Your Continual Action Paved Our Success

We are ecstatic to announce the three bills we have been championing received and passed their respective floor vote!! We cannot underestimate the huge success and rarity this is. Here are the final counts:

• HB 1110, our Middle Housing bill, passed the House with a 75 – 21 vote

• HB 1181, our GMA Climate bill, passed the House with a 57 – 41 vote

• SB 5466, our Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) bill, passed the Senate with a 40 – 8 vote

This is in huge part because of the continual action from our supporters, allies, and everyone who kept contacting their elected officials.

We surpassed our goal of 1000 individuals taking action during this floor vote frenzy, with over 4500 emails sent! We want to thank specifically the Washington Conservation Action, Sierra Club, Habitat for Humanity SKC, Our Climate, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, and more. Again, we mean it when we say this is a collective effort so thank you.

What’s next

After this first floor vote, we know we have to go through this process all over again in the other chamber (e.g. once it passes in the House, it has to go through the Senate). This means another round of committee meetings, testifying opportunities, and signing in PRO. We’ll do our best to keep you updated (while not flooding your inbox) so be sure you are subscribed to our legislative newsletter!

That’s all we have! Thank you again.