2026 Legislative Session

Olympia Watch is WashCOG’s weekly report on what’s happening in the state legislature and your guide to action.

We’re kicking off the 2026 edition of the Washington Coalition for Open Government’s weekly Olympia Watch. We’ll be informing readers each Monday about legislation we’re tracking at the state capitol that could affect government transparency.

 We’ve got a list of 13 bills held over from 2025 and (at last count) 11 bills or emerging bills for 2026.  We’ll be keeping you up to date each Monday on what we expect to come up during the week, until the end of the legislative session in March.

Jan. 12-16, 2026

Here are bills we expect to testify on this week:

●  SB 5683 comes up Tuesday at the Senate State Government Committee. It would prevent destruction of important historical records of the treatment of people with disabilities in state institutions. It would make the records public if they’re 75-plus years old, even if they would otherwise be exempt as health/patient records. This continues the work of Stacy Dym, executive director of The Arc of Washington, and Tim Gerlitz, superintendent of Lakeland Village, a state facility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dym and Gerlitz worked to preserve records at Lakeland Village, which was established in 1914. They were recognized for their work with a Key Award in 2024 for their work in this arena. More details here.

●  HB 2333 - On Wednesday, the House State Government & Tribal Affairs Committee takes up what we expect to be controversial legislation proposed to hide the home addresses of legislators in order to better ensure their safety.  This comes in the wake of assassinations of state legislators in Minnesota.

●  HB 2244 - At the same State Government Committee meeting on Wednesday, HB 2244 will be considered. It would implement at least some of the pro-transparency recommendations of the legislatively appointed Sunshine Committee, which gathered together stakeholders in government and civil society, among others, to ferret out unwarranted exemptions to the Public Records Act.

Please let us know if you learn about transparency-related legislation we are not covering here.