Policy Change Toolkit

Washington State has 49 state legislative districts. Each district is represented by 1 State Senator (four-year term) and 2 State Representatives (two-year terms). That adds up to 49 Senators, 98 House members, and 147 state legislators in total.

• Use the District Finder tool to identify districts using a street address
• Find e-mail addresses for legislators and their aides: Roster of All State Legislators
• Roster of State Legislators by County
• Pictorial Directories of Legislators

Planning and Holding a Meeting

Policymaker Engagement Guide: Communicating with your Legislator
This 7-page step-by-step guide from the Foundation for Healthy Generations is a great planning tool for planning and holding a meeting with a state legislator.

Sharing Information Via Email

Tips for Emailing Your WA State Legislator
A 1-page primer from Washington Breathes on how to use email communication to educate your state legislator.

Town Hall Meetings

Legislators hold "town hall" sessions in their districts at various times near and during the legislative session to explain their priorities, listen to community input, and answer questions. Providing information or asking a question about an issue is education. Sessions may be in-person, virtual, or hybrid.

The best way to find out about Town Halls and other local events with specific legislators is to sign up for their e-newsletters. Look for information on their home page on leg.wa.gov.

Town Halls are most commonly held just before, during, and just after the state legislative session. State legislators cannot hold Town Halls during election years for their position.

Some caucuses have calendars of events online:

• Senate Democrats Town Halls
• House Democrats Town Halls
• House Republican Town Halls

On the Legislature's main Bill Information page, you can search by bill number, by text, or through a variety of reporting tools. When searching for a bill from a previous year, be sure to select the correct session year (e.g. 2021-2022).

Read the Bill History Page: this tutorial guides you through how to understand the large amount of information on each bill page. This guide is helpful for understanding the meaning of commonly used terms.

TVW videos of bill hearings are linked from the bottom of each bill’s page and from the committee's pages.

Bill Tracking Tools

• Sign-up for to receive email notifications for specific bills:
  1) Enter the bill number on the bill information page
  2) Use the 'Email Notifications' button on the right side of the bill page to sign up for email notices.
• Sign-up to receive email notifications with House and Senate committee updates. These will include agendas for hearings and executive sessions on bills.
• Access Legislative Reports on the status of current bills and more
• Watch this 14-minute Bill Tracking Tutorial from the Legislative Information Center

Additional Resources

Guide to Reading a Legislative Measure: 2-page annotated guide to understand the components and effects of state bills.

Laws & Agency Rules Page: Bills are introduced to make changes to existing state laws in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW). Washington Administration Code (WAC) rules are often created to implement the RCWs.

The Citizen's Guide to the Operating Budget provides an overview of how the budget is created and the sources of revenue that support the budget. The FY 2023-2025 Supplemental Budget will be considered during the 2024 Legislative Session. Check out the following resources:

• The latest 2024 Operating Budget Proposals for commercial tobacco program funding
• WA State Fiscal Info has links to current budget proposals, budget guides, historical info on past budgets, revenues, and more.
• The Legislative Evaluation & Accountability Program Committee (LEAP) has interactive tools and reports to compare current and prior budgets.

At the start of each biennium (in odd-numbered years), the House and the Senate form legislative committees, which hold hearings on bills. Appointments to committees are made by the leadership of each party in the chamber. The majority party in each chamber determines who chairs each committee.

The Legislative Committees page has information with each committee's member roster, agendas, calendars, archived videos, and committee documents. The 'Committee Documents' page for each meeting is very important because it provides information that is not linked to the bill pages, including any proposed amendments or substitute bills that the committee will consider.

During bill hearings, testimony is heard and stakeholders may also "sign in" with a position on a bill. Committees hold an executive session to vote on a bill, where the discussion is only among legislators. All hearings and executive sessions are broadcast live on TVW, and recordings are archived. You can find links to live and archived committee videos at the bottom of each bill page.

Use the Committee Sign In page to see who has asked to testify at a bill hearing, and how people are recording positions on a bill. You need to know the bill number, the committee name, and the hearing date (find these on the bill information page).

The Rules Committees operate very differently. These committees determine which bills will move to the floor for a potential vote of the House or the Senate. There are no hearings or public testimony in Rules. The Rules Committees meeting times are at the discretion of the Speaker for the House and the Lieutenant Governor for the Senate. The House and Senate have slightly different processes for advancing bills towards a floor vote.

• General overview of Rules Committee process for WA Legislature
• Shorthand guide to Senate Rules Committee

The Legislative Information Center is your resource for information about the Legislature. They provide free classes, online tutorial recordings, and a variety explanatory documents.