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Committee hears competing fixes for toxicology backlog as Seattle cites 22‑month turnaround
Summary
Legislators heard that allowing ISO/IEC‑accredited private labs to perform blood and breath testing could help jurisdictions clear long backlogs, but prosecutors, labor‑force experts and defense attorneys warned it won’t solve systemic underfunding and raised discovery and witness issues.
The House Community Safety Committee heard rapid testimony on second substitute Senate Bill 5,880 on Feb. 19, a proposal that would allow ISO/IEC‑accredited private laboratories to perform blood and breath analyses used in impaired‑driving cases and let local governments accept private funding to use those labs.
Martha Whaling, staff to the committee, told members the bill would permit private labs' test results to be admissible so long as testing follows approved methods and, if a city or county opts to use outside testing, it must contract with the Washington State Patrol to reimburse the patrol’s costs for moving evidence.
Senator Keith Wagoner and multiple…
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