Happy New Year from the 2025 Inland Northwest AGC Advocacy Newsletter

Welcome to Week 3 of the 2025 Legislative Session.

Did you know our 2025 Legislative Guide is now available? 

Click here to jump to it.   

• The Legislative Guide always outlines our main areas of focus and issues, along with contact information if you want to reach out to any of the elected officials covering our sliver of Eastern WA. 

We Need Your Stories on the 2 CBA/Prevailing Wage Issue to Help Move Forward SB 5293/HB 1387

Our Chapter is seeking stories from you regarding:

• Challenges on bidding projects due to unexpected impacts of a second CBA
• Challenges of a 2nd CBA spiking a wage significantly enough it has caused staffing issues within your organization (on that project or moving staff between projects)
• Bidding in a new municipality subject to a before unknown one-off or small group CBA
• Other Prevailing Wages Issues that Directly Impacted your businees due to one-off/small group CBAs impacting the marketplace

Legislators need to hear these challenges if we are going to get significant movement on these bills to create the needed fix. Please send your statements to Joel at Joelb@nwagc.org or call him at (509) 388-4038 to share your stories. 

Legislative Session: Bills to watch 

SB 5061

This bill would undo the long-standing practice of locking Prevailing Wages into rate in effect on the date of bid acceptance.  

• While some prediction as to wages could be applied during a standard CBA period, any project bridging between 2 CBAs faces huge uncertainty about wages for the latter part of the project.
• The current effects of the "highest wage" CBA impacting Prevailing Wages further increases uncertainty as a single one-off agreement can financially impact all public works projects where that CBA would be enforcable.
• The financial uncertainty for contractors means that any bidder will have to significantly increase their bid to create a financial buffer, or face the real possiblility of incruing financial losses.

This bill was heard in committee on 1/24 and AGC's Chief Lobbiest Jerry Vanderwood provided testimony against this bill.

HB 1303/SB 5380

Entitled Increasing environmental justice by improving government decisions this bill adds:

• "Environmental justice" to the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) review process
• Requires SEPA lead agencies to complete an "environmental justice impact statement", meeting specified substantive criteria and following specified processes, for potentially impactful projects in certain communities.
• Prohibits, under the Clean Air Act, approvals for certain new air contaminant sources located in specified communities.

In other words: How, by using preset criteria and preconceved notions, does the state view any project as harmful to those living in the vicinity of the project?

This bill would make construction of certain neccessary or economically advantageous projects far more difficult, if not imposssible.  And as we know any additional review period/permitting process only ever adds to the cost of the project.

AGC opposes this bill. This bill was first heard in committee on 1/23.

HB 1155/SB 5437 - AGC Opposes these bills  

WA has in place a ban on the use and enforcement of noncompete agreements for any employee making under an income threshold (in 2025 its $123,349.17).  HB 1155 goes further and voids all current non-competes in force in WA and bans future use of them, and narrows use of non-solicitation agreements.  

Recieved it's first hearing on January 15th and is scheduled for a committee executive session/vote on Jan 31st.

HB 1173/SB 5447 - AGC Opposes these bills

These bills woud introduce a prevailing wage on high-hazard facilities.

• Applies to oil refineries currently
•  Specifically calls out all construction/alteration/maintenence work done by contractors/subcontractors
• AGC has long opposed these efforts as an attempt to insert prevailing wages onto private industry jobs, opening the door for prevailing wages to be imposed on commercial construction. 

This bill was heard in the House Labor and Workplace Standards committee on Jan 15th, and passed out of committee on party lines 6-3 on Jan 22nd.

SB 5041  - AGC Opposes this bill

SB 5041 would allow for workers to collect unemployment benefits while on strike or lockout, irrigardless of any strike fund payments. 

On Jan 21st the Senate Labor and Commerce committee heard testimony from a variety of organizations and individuals. During questions the Chair and Vice Chair of asked some questions that contained some couched language that seemed to target businesses as the bad guy in strikes.

Buisness organizations pushed back point out the fact that both sides face financial pain during a strike, and neither enter them lightly. Further, while this bill does charge back the cost of UI payments to the employer of the striking worker (rather than socializing all the costs to all contributing employers) several Advocats pointed out that certain large businesses could reach a cap to required contributions, leaving all remaining costs to be socialized. 

Currently the UI fund is considered to be fiscally healthly, but what that meant for each side was vastly different. Business organizations attempted to remind the committee that to keep it healthy adding additional financial draws puts the fund in the same concerning catagory as PFML and WA Cares. Others sugget that that means its ok to spend more...

SB 5215 - AGC has not yet taken a position on this bill 

Here is a bill that will most heavily impact our supplier/civil members, but can have an impact on any company.   

• Beginning Oct. 1, 2025: 

·          

• All vehicles operating on a paved public highway with a load of dirt, sand, pebbles, cobbles, gravel, or any aggregate materials susceptible to being dropped, spilled, leaked, sifted, blown, or otherwise escaping from the vehicle must use a covering so as to prevent spillage or any hazard to other users of the highway. The covering of such loads is not required if six inches of freeboard is maintained within the bed, but if a vehicle hauling such loads is equipped with a covering, the covering must be used. 
• Beginning Oct 1, 2028: 

·          

• The exceptions for six inches of freeboard end. 
• Enforcement rules that will begin Oct 1, 2025: 

·          

• Any person operating a vehicle carrying a load as described above will be responsible for any fallen or escaped loads from the highway and remain at the scene until the fallen or escaped load has been removed.  This person will also be responsible for any costs incurred in removing the debris.   

·          

• State patrol and local law enforcement, when appropriate, shall enforce the requirements of this law. It will be ticketed as a gross misdemeanor if, due to negligence, violates these rules. Further misdemeanor charges can be filed if such a violation causes damage to the property of another. 

This bill was heard in committee on Jan. 20th.

SB 5091 - AGC Suppors this bill.

This bill, brought forth in part by Tri-Cities native and 8th Leg District Sen. Matt Boehnke, works to roll back WA's damaging connection with California Regulations in regards to zero-emissions Truck standards.  

• Beginning last year dealers had to sell ZEV Medium and Heavy-Duty trucks before they could sell the corresponding amount of standard diesel trucks. This reduced sales at most dealerships by as much as 50%.
• ZEVs are more expensive for dealers to purchase, even considering credits and rebates, and take longer to sell resulting in higher overhead/smaller margins for dealers.
• There aren't enough being manufactured.  Low market demand due to high cost, lack of appropriate charging stations, and shorter range (~150 miles compared to 1,000+ for standard trucks) has led to layoffs at manufacturing facilities, resulting in a spiraling senerio the market can't seem to escape.

There will likely be a day where ZEVs become common in the new-truck sales marketplace. However regulations that hope to speed this adoption up, without corresponding to current technology and manufacturing realities, have no place in this state.

HB 1217/5222 - AGC Opposes these bills

There are few bills that drew as much attention from legislators and the public this session as Rent Control.  Corresponding bills were heard by committees in both chambers these last 2 weeks.

IF there is one thing that both caucuses can agree on it is that we face a housing crisis. But how we solve that as a community faced some serious ideologic obsticles during the committee hearings.

• Republicans, Businesses, Investors, and Associations all testified to the fact that Rent Control not only fails to acknowledge ongoing cost increases (property tax proposals, utility cost fluctionations, managment costs, variable loan terms, and reinvestment into properties) that don't align cleanly with a arbitrary % cap on annual increases.
• Republicans, Businesses, Investors, and Associations all testified to the fact that rent control has a cooling effect on future development, as well as the renovations marketplace.
• And they all testified to the fact that current state policies including "green" efforts, the Growth Management Act, and duplicating and slow permitting processes have artificially inflated the cost of development, exasserbating the problem and creating the supply/demand state that contributed to price increases.
• Democrats focused on testimony from impacted individuals, including the bill's sponsor, who spoke to having to move themselves or loved ones annually due to steep rent increases.
• Democrats seemed to believe that testimony from owner/operators was overblown and healthy margins could easily be maintained.

Also no one in the room seemed to address, or even see, the Elephant in the room: the landlord's choice to not renew a lease at the end of it's term.  If the marketplace, expenses, or both constitute a situation where a rent would normally rise above the cap proposed then the landlord can simply opt to not renew.  In this case the newly advertised rental can be listed at a new, higher price to meet the landlord's needs and still leaves the renter without a solution.

The only way this state can solve rising housing costs, and the associated homelessness issues, is to open the doors to new, desirable, investment opportunties for entreprenuers and for larger investment groups.  But the majority, according to Rep. April Connors (ranking member on the House Housing Committee), is so tunnel visioned on cost and ideals that they are likly to make the problem worse, rather than better.

SB 5176 - AGC supports this bill.

The Capital Projects Advisory Review Board (CPARB) put together a response to prompt-payment concerns for General and Subcontractors on public works projects.  The response has now become SB 5176, which will require Public Owners to promptly pay GCs so that they can do the same to subs/suppliers, and so on. Among the provisions:

• Requires payment on public works projects within 30 days of receipt of a properly completed invoice, and all subcontractors to be paid within ten days after payment is received by the prime contractor, with 1 percent interest per month charged on all late payments (this applies to the public owners as well).
• Sets forth requirements for public works contracts and modifies requirements for requesting change orders.
• Adjusts the rate of withholding in good faith disputes from 150 percent to 100 percent. 

This bill was passed out of committee on Jan 24th.

For any questions regarding AGC Legislative positions or to get further details contact Joel Bouchey at joelb@nwagc.org or 509-388-4038 or Cheryl Stewart at cstewart@nwagc.org. 

You are invited to become more directly involved in the AGC's Advocacy by joining our chapters Government Affairs committee or to make donations to our Political Action Committee the Build East PAC.

Congratulations for reading all the way to the bottom. If you read this far you are officially an AGC Advocacy Superstar!