The U.S. House of Representatives has an opportunity to take up the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act (SAWA) currently being championed by House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson.

Washington state is among the top users of the H-2A farmworker visa program nationwide, averaging between 30,000 and 35,000 H-2A visa approvals annually. Under the current program, farmworkers are limited to seasonal jobs lasting no more than 10 months and they must be foreign nationals coming from abroad to work.

A patient with chest pain is not sitting in the back of an ambulance comparing hospital prices on her phone. Nor will most patients comparison-shop when an insurer or government program pays most of the bill. That is the basic limitation of hospital price transparency in America’s third-party-payer system.

That reality should temper some of the celebration surrounding the Trump administration’s renewed enforcement of federal hospital price-transparency rules. The administration recently warned more than 500 hospitals, including nine in Washington state, to provide required pricing information or face fines. Hospitals that remain out of compliance can face annual penalties based on their bed count, reaching approximately $2 million for the largest hospitals.

Enforcement is appropriate, but fines are not free. Hospitals may absorb some of the expense, but in a system financed by policyholders, employers and taxpayers, the cost of punishment does not simply disappear.

Three months after lawmakers raised taxes to balance this year's supplemental budget, the revenue those taxes were supposed to deliver is already coming in short.

If you don’t want Washingtonians to experience the healthcare access problems, waitlists, lack of choice, high taxes and rationing practices that people in countries with taxpayer-funded universal healthcare experience, you should be part of a conversation that’s happening right now in Washington state.

A Universal Health Care Commission (UHCC) was set into motion with legislation in 2021. Its charge is to pave a path toward government-run health care for all Washingtonians. The group meets regularly — and it hears regularly from proponents of socialized medicine with little to no contrary thought. (Thanks is due Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax. He's a commission member who regularly asks inconvenient questions that show how a socialized system is not all unicorns and rainbows, and his questions expose how far the UHCC actually is from figuring out how to manage such a system — and how to pay for it.)

The commission’s next meeting is Thursday, June 18, from 2 to 5 p.m. Look here to find meeting materials and see ways to submit comments or attend the meeting online or in person. 

Two years after Seattle implemented its landmark app-based worker minimum payment ordinance, better known as the “PayUp” law, the results are in, and they confirm what we at the Washington Policy Center warned from the beginning. This policy, which forces delivery platforms to pay drivers nearly $30 per hour before tips and mileage, has backfired spectacularly. 

Washington Policy Center (WPC) often hears public employees say they didn’t know they had a choice about union membership. That’s not surprising. Government employers generally don’t provide information about this right, and unions have no incentive to emphasize it. Further confusing the issue, union dues, which can add up to $1,000 or more each year, are commonly deducted through government payroll systems based on authorization information provided by unions. 

That’s why we’ve created a simple, one-page resource public employers can use to improve employee awareness about choices available to them.

Like a re-run of Groundhog Day, Lynnwood is once again considering a local minimum wage increase above the statewide rate of $17.13 per hour.

On June 5, the director of Gov. Ferguson's Office of Financial Management (OFM) sent every state agency a letter telling them to brace for what she called "the most challenging budget any of us has yet faced in these roles." Gov. Ferguson shared it himself, saying it lays out the challenge well and noting that he will release his own budget proposal in December.

The letter does not understate that WA has a budget problem. We do. Where it gets evasive is the cause. OFM blames inflation, federal funding cuts, population growth, economic uncertainty, and court decisions, a list that frames the shortfall as something that happened to the state rather than something the state chose. The numbers tell a different story.

Tacoma voters are being asked to approve Initiative Measure No. 3, marketed as the “Safe Homes for All Initiative.” While the name sounds appealing, this measure would impose heavy new regulations, create tenant unions, steep fines, and a new per-unit rental licensing fee on property owners. The result will almost certainly be the opposite of what supporters claim.

The first confirmed case of New World Screwworm in the United States in more than 60 years highlights what makes the checkoff system valuable to food producers today.

It is nearly 2,100 miles from Washington state to Zavala County, Texas, where the invasive pest was discovered June 3. The announcement of the 3-week-old calf carrying the insect, caused a ripple of alarm through the livestock industry.

Read my guest opinion in The Center Square about the state's recent letter that says, “If you are currently exempt from WA Cares because you have private long-term care insurance, you have a limited chance to join the program.”

The option is open until June 30, 2028.

I wrote a guest column for The Seattle Times on WA Cares, as the state prepares to send out the program’s first benefits. Starting in July, a small share of workers may qualify if they have paid the tax for three years and need help with at least three activities of daily living.

The question is what $36,500 buys when long-term care is needed. The likely answer: not enough. Read more here.

Recent headlines highlighted Seattle posting the fifth-largest numeric population gain among U.S. cities with 20,000+ residents in 2025. On the surface, this looks like a rebound from years of reported exodus. In reality, it reveals deeper structural problems with Washington’s high-tax, high-regulation model. 

Despite what many might think, our agricultural community is vast and diverse. Many food producers hold a university degree. Most producers attend at least one continuing education class or conference annually. Almost all our producers are willing to attend international trade missions to meet with consumers in virtually every marketplace across the globe.

Our state boasts producers and workers of many cultures and backgrounds including Sikh, Muslim, Thai, Iraqi, Hindu, Mexican, Jamaican, Native American, Pacific Islander, Korean, Japanese, African American, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan, and many, many more. Washington state’s farms and ranches are ahead of the curve in number owned and operated by women and most of our producers are under the age of 64.

Still, we are labeled as “old, white men” who oppress others.

Seattle’s new Mayor Katie Wilson has made no secret of her frustration with high grocery prices and store closures. She has declared that “food deserts are not natural” and that “corporations create them when they abandon our communities.”

Washington state has a rocky relationship with the H-2A farmworker visa program.

Under the H-2A farmworker visa program, employers must advertise locally for at least 60 days before the start of work to prove there are no local workers willing and able to fulfill their needs. Once that need has been certified as existing by both the state and federal governments, employers can then recruit farmworkers from abroad to legally work in the United States with a visa for up to 10 months while living in employer provided housing.

Seattle’s ill-conceived ban on algorithmic rent-setting software illustrates what critics see as a textbook case of unconstitutional government meddling in private markets. Now Bellingham is poised to repeat the same mistake.

Nearly 1 in 4 employers are now actively considering relocating their businesses out of state, up sharply from the previous quarter and nearly triple the level from last year.

Sound Transit's "enterprise initiative" hasn't produced a revised plan that keeps faith with voters or addresses regional mobility needs. The on-line survey conducted by Sound Transit fails to ask the key questions and provides little insight into the available options. The Sound Transit board needs to take a step back, establish clear priorities that reflect regional needs, and consider a wider range of plan alternatives. 

When a family opens a health insurance bill and sees a higher premium, the problem is obvious, and the hunt for a better deal often begins. What is less obvious is whether lawmakers will diagnose the problem correctly.

Washington state’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange numbers are already being treated as a simple story: Federal enhanced ACA premium subsidies expired, premiums rose and thousands of people became uninsured. 

Washington's state operating budget has doubled over the past 10 years, climbing from roughly $38 billion to $80 billion. A handful of progressive advocacy groups are nevertheless telling the public that the budget has been shrinking.

Serious promises deserve serious scrutiny. Serious scrutiny requires looking not just at what has been said, but what has been done. 

During debate on SB 6346 (the income tax), lawmakers had repeated opportunities to demonstrate that affordability and fairness were truly the priority. They could have adopted amendments that directly lowered costs for working families, added accountability protections, limited future expansion of the tax or ensured the revenue would actually be spent where supporters claimed it would go. 

Again and again, those amendments were rejected. 

Retired Washington firefighters and police officers are suing the state to stop one of the most dangerous pension raids in American history.

They should win, and the courts should not have to work hard to get there.

Imagine having to stop at state lines and earn a new driver’s license every time you traveled, despite years of safe driving experience. States recognize that the public benefit of mobility outweighs minor differences in standards. Even when you move to a new state, the process is usually limited: provide your out-of-state license to the DMV, pass a vision test where required, pay a fee and provide documents proving your identity and new address. Washington state does not require adults moving from another state to take a new driving test, even though states have different driving rules and licensing requirements.

Occupational licensing often works differently. Experienced workers who have already proven competence and are licensed elsewhere can still face costly delays, duplicative paperwork, extra schooling, training or other unnecessary barriers before being allowed to work in their profession in a new state. Reform is needed to get people to work more quickly, and I've written a policy brief that explains how.

Washington state lawmakers could have given workers a sales-tax cut this past legislative session. They could have lowered or enforced limitations on the payroll taxes eating into workers’ wages. They could have changed state policies that make driving to work a luxury, given our state’s high fuel costs. But instead, they gave workers the promise of an income tax and a rising payroll-tax burden.

Any of those tax-relieving moves lawmakers did not take would have made a meaningful dent in the state’s affordability problem. They also would have made a more convincing case that lawmakers are serious about righting what many of them call an upside-down tax code. (I do not call it that. Those with high incomes deserve thank-you cards from the rest of us for paying more than their fair share of the tax bill.)