Please vote in the Washington State primaries on August 4, and as the following article from the Washington State Catholic Conference urges us, let’s ask questions of our legislative candidates to “support open debate among legislative committee members”.
The WSCC is non-partisan and does not endorse candidates or parties.
With so much happening in the federal sphere, it can be easy to lose sight of what is happening locally. But an important advocacy opportunity is upon us in Washington state. The candidate filing period for Washington legislative races ends May 8. Between that day and the primary election in August, we encourage Catholics to ask each person running for the legislature in your district, how will they ensure citizens have meaningful access to their legislators so they can be better informed and make their voices heard?
Citizen access to the governing process is critical to our Catholic duty to participate in our democracy. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states it clearly:
“Participation in community life is not only one of the greatest aspirations of the citizen, called to exercise freely and responsibly his civic role with and for others, but it is also one of the pillars of all democratic orders and one of the major guarantees of the permanence of the democratic
system. . . This means that the different subjects of civil community at every level must be informed, listened to and involved in the exercise of the carried-out function.” (190).
The legislative process works best when it is an open dialogue between opposing points of view. Law that is the result of legislators talking with constituents and stakeholders, even those who oppose the policy, often results in changes to a bill that improve the outcomes of the legislation. Unfortunately, state legislators determine the fate of most bills in closed, single-party caucus meetings, then meet in public executive sessions to cast pre-determined votes. During 2026, far too many of those meetings resulted in committees voting up or down on amendments to legislation with only one side of the debate articulating any reasons for their votes. When only one side provides its reasoning for a vote, the public is left without information it needs to understand how a bill is expected to work in reality.
Further complicating the situation is a decision by the Court of Appeals in Tacoma which gave credence to a newly declared “legislative privilege” to hide internal decision-making processes from disclosure. As reported by the Washington Coalition for Open Government, the
ruling found “a privilege against the disclosure of records revealing internal legislative deliberations concerning bills contemplated or introduced in either house of the Legislature… . The ruling, if it stands, would be a blow to government transparency in Washington state, making it harder for ordinary citizens and journalists to understand how decisions are made in Olympia.”
As the legislative process runs now, citizens can testify in committees but receive little if any information from legislators about their knowledge of and thoughts about specific legislation. Yes, legislators send out bulletins to keep their constituents informed, but often those bulletins are canned forms, identical across legislators of the same party. The bulletins also fail to reveal anything about the policy discussions between proponents and opponents that lead to bills passing or not. Those discussions take place almost entirely behind closed doors among
party members and with special interest lobbyists. There also appears, from what little information is available to the public, to be limited meaningful engagement with the opposition party, on either side of the political aisle.
Catholic social doctrine holds that “all those attitudes that encourage in citizens an inadequate or incorrect practice of participation or that cause widespread disaffection with everything connected with the sphere of social and political life are a source of concern and deserve careful consideration” (CSDC 191). Whether it involves attempts on the federal level to discourage voting or on the state level to stymie citizen engagement, we as Catholics must raise our voices in support of our God-given right and duty to participate in our democracy at every level.
What can you do? … Attend candidate forums, send emails or call candidates (check this page
information) and ask them or their proxies who knock on your door, how they will help to change current legislative practices that result in the public having very limited information about their deliberations over policies that impact the residents of this state. More specifically, ask if they will support more open debate among legislative committee members before public comment in committee meetings, ending or at least severely limiting the self-created legislative privilege, and providing more opportunities for public dialogue around bills to ensure final passed versions are as fully-vetted as possible, long before the impacts are felt by the public.