Dear friends and neighbors,

The 2026 legislative session has come to a close! In just 60 days, we’ve managed to pass major legislation on civil rights and justice, health care, housing, and other important issues – along with the Millionaires Tax, a historic tax reform bill to fix our upside-down tax code, provide major tax cuts for small businesses and working families, and dedicate more funding for the schools, health care, and higher education that we all know Washingtonians count on. After years of work, this is news to celebrate!

We passed too many bills to cover in one e-newsletter, but I want to start today with just a few highlights:

Millionaires Tax

This tax will be paid by less than 1% of Washingtonians, and it will benefit 100% of the population by funding schools, health care, higher education, and the other essential services Washingtonians count on. The 9.9% tax applies only to annual earnings of more than $1 million. So, if a household makes $1,000,500 each year, only $500 will be taxed. Again, less than 1% of people in the state will pay this tax.

In addition to supporting our schools, health care, and services through the general fund, the revenue will help:

  • Eliminate sales tax on all diapers, personal care products, and many over-the-counter drugs.
  • Set aside 5% of annual tax proceeds for the Fair Start for Kids Act, which increases access to early learning programs, and provides resources to support child care and early learning providers.
  • Provide free breakfast and lunch for all our public school children.
  • This bill has the biggest tax break in state history for small businesses by more than doubling the B&O small business tax credit. With this change, about two-thirds of all Washington businesses will be completely exempt from the B&O tax.

We expect there will be a court challenge to the bill – just as there was to the capital gains tax – and just as the capital gains tax was upheld by the Supreme Court, I expect this to be upheld as well.

Health Care

We passed two important bills I sponsored to protect the right to abortion – legislation expanding the availability of mifepristone pills that are essential to both medication abortions and miscarriage care, and a bill to set up a permanent funding source for abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood. We also passed legislation to make sure that recommendations and guidance around vaccines and other medical services they need are based on science and evidence.

Housing

As chair of the Senate Housing Committee, I am committed to making progress every year on creating attainable and affordable housing. We passed a whole suite of bills through the committee this year, but a few highlights include changing zoning laws to open up more commercial areas for building housing such as apartments and condos, the bill I sponsored to ensure renters receive the same notice and warning about known flood risks that homebuyers get, and a bill to cut red tape to streamline and speed up permitting for local housing development.

Civil Rights

Just like you, I am shocked and appalled by the violent, chaotic, and out-of-control immigration enforcement we are seeing on the news and in our community. At the state level, our ability to control immigration enforcement is limited, but we’re doing everything we can to protect Washingtonians. We banned the use of masks by federal, state, and local law enforcement, including federal ICE agents except in a limited number of exemptions, took steps to keep the federal government from collecting Washingtonian’s sensitive voter data, and passed a bill to protect Washington’s immigrant workforce from federal overreach.

Affordability

We passed legislation to help low-income Washingtonians pay their energy bills and cut property taxes for 30,000 Washingtonians who are seniors, living with a disability, or are disabled veterans. Many of the housing bills we passed will lower the cost of building new housing and help provide more affordable housing on the market, and the Millionaires Tax includes new tax breaks to help lower costs. Because there is already no sales tax on food, with the new Millionaires Tax breaks on hygiene products and over-the-counter medications, that means almost everything in a family’s grocery cart will be tax free. That goes along with expanding the Working Families Tax Credit and the Small Business Tax Credit!

I’ll continue to stay in touch with you and share more details about these bills and the many others that we passed to help make Washington the best state it can be.

While the session is over, I remain your senator year-round. Feel free to reach out any time with questions or input, you can contact me at Jessica.Bateman@leg.wa.gov. I expect to hold a town hall event in the coming weeks with my seatmates, Reps. Beth Doglio and Lisa Parshley, and will let you know when the details for that are set. And I’ll continue to send you email updates with more details on the bills we passed this year and the ongoing legislative work I’m doing this interim.

Thank you so much for your participation and engagement this year! Legislators wouldn’t be able to do our work without the input and feedback we get from constituents, and I’m proud to represent such an active and involved district. We’ve accomplished some good things together, and I’m excited for what we’re going to do next.

In service,

Jess