Staff outlines draft 2026 legislative priorities including jail funding, indigent defense and language access

Jordan Bogie, the county’s policy analyst, presented a draft list of Clark County’s proposed priorities for the 2026 state legislative session, telling the council the session will be short — 60 days — and the county needs to prioritize requests ahead of January. “It is a short session. And so just 60 days, it will be a, a sprint through through that legislative session,” Bogie said.

Bogie grouped likely requests into annual/recurring items, an unsupported 2025 request to re-seek funding, and a “parking lot” of potential priorities. He said likely recurring items include a local capital request (the county previously secured $1.5 million for jail work), and sustaining funding for projects on the 170 Ninth Street corridor. Bogie called indigent defense funding a likely priority for counties statewide, saying: “By the time the new caseload standards that the Washington Supreme Court just implemented are are fully implemented, in a decade, It will triple costs for indigent defense or more for the county. So going from 7 or $8,000,000 a year to potentially as much as 27 or $28,000,000, if if fully implemented.”

Bogie said a 2025 request for permitting system back-end upgrades by the eCityGov Alliance did not secure state funding and may be reintroduced; the proposal sought roughly $2.7 million from the consortium matched by $2.7 million from the Department of Commerce. He also listed other potential priorities and issues to track: Vancouver Lake management, third-corridor visioning, Chuukese language recognition and interpreter access, retirement parity for corrections officers, benthic algal mats and pet/human exposure, funding to open the Brockman involuntary treatment campus, state support for forest conservation, ensuring Clark County projects receive state housing trust fund awards, permanence for the Southwest Washington Law Enforcement Academy, septic elimination funding, treasurer cost-recovery for services to junior taxing districts, the state clean buildings initiative (an unfunded mandate), and revisiting dash-cam footage release rules.

Councilors pressed on several items. Councilor Young supported making corrections-officer retirement parity a high priority, citing trauma and physical demands. On Chuukese language access, Bogie said he would follow up with departments; a district court official present said the state does not recognize Chuukese as a certified language and that interpreter funding is limited; courts are exploring contracting solutions.

Mark Gassaway (county) cautioned that a county sales-tax remittance option (referred to as “15.90” by speakers) has an implementation timeline: “there's a 75 note 75 day notification period for the Department of Revenue. So once it's approved...the actual collection doesn't start until the quarter after the 75 days. So if you were to approve it now, it probably wouldn't start until October sometime,” he said, adding a two-month distribution lag.

Bogie said staff will continue outreach to county departments and the county’s legislative delegation, collect department priorities, and return with a prioritized list in the fall. The council asked staff for clearer one- or two-line explanations of items for sharing with legislators.