House Bill 1013 would revise the list of positions in the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) that the state civil service law expressly exempts, the committee heard in a staff briefing and sponsor testimony.

Connor Schiff, staff to the committee, explained the bill’s scope: it lists executive, deputy, assistant, senior director, division director, regional administrator, district manager, and comparable roles to be explicitly exempt. The sponsor, Representative Schmidt, told the committee the measure is largely a technical update to align statutory language with the department’s current organizational structure; the sponsor said a similar bill passed the House in the prior session and ran out of time in the Senate.

Department witnesses Andrew Colvin and Joanna Tatarian of DSHS Human Resources reiterated that most of the positions are already treated as exempt in practice and described the measure as housekeeping to reflect changes since the last statutory revision in 1980. Staff and witnesses said there is no intent to change the status of currently exempt positions beyond clarifying statutory language.

The committee had no recorded amendments or votes in the hearing transcript and closed the public hearing after questions.