Ways & Means advances dozens of bills to Rules with fiscal notes on housing, education, online safety and health

The Washington Senate Ways & Means Committee met in executive session on Friday, Feb. 28, and advanced a large packet of bills to the Rules Committee, recommending many for passage and reporting a small number without recommendation. The committee discussed fiscal notes, several adopted amendments and a handful of bills that it did not act on during the session.

The committee’s work at the fiscal cutoff focused on measures with near‑term or multi‑biennium fiscal impacts, including housing bills, education funding changes, online protections for minors and several health‑ and long‑term‑care–related proposals. Staff briefings accompanying the packet cited newly published fiscal notes for multiple bills; committee members debated amendments and, in a number of cases, rolled adopted amendments into second substitutes before voting.

Among the bills the committee discussed at length were substitute Senate Bill 5,469, a measure to prohibit certain uses of rental‑market data and algorithmic tools to recommend rents to landlords; substitute Senate Bill 5,496, which would limit certain entities’ ownership of single‑family homes and create enforcement under the Consumer Protection Act; and substitute Senate Bill 5,708, a package of restrictions on online services’ treatment of minors that would limit profiling and the use of “dark patterns.” Staff presented fiscal notes for those bills: SB 5,469 included an updated estimate of roughly $415,000 in state funds over the 2025–27 biennium for attorney‑general investigations and support; SB 5,496 showed estimated costs of about $468,000 in total state funds in 2025–27; and SB 5,708 carried estimated impacts of about $470,000 in total state funds for the current biennium and $898,000 over the outlook period, largely to the Attorney General’s Office for investigations and litigation.

The committee also considered housing‑related measures with larger fiscal notes and programmatic effects. Substitute Senate Bill 5,613 (clear and objective development regulations and a Commerce model code) carried a fiscal estimate of about $766,000 in 2025–27 and $1.2 million over four years; Senate Bill 5,587 (biennial housing report enhancements) had an estimated $309,000 GFS cost in 2025–27; and a set of…