What Died in Committee — Washington’s 2023-24 Legislative Session

01

Findings

What the session’s record shows, stated before the tables that follow. Every figure below is read from the same records as the sections beneath it.

Most bills that die are never heard.

Of the 2,696 bills that failed in the 2023-24 session, 1,271 — 47.1% — never received a public hearing in any committee. The rest died only after being heard.

A bill can die two ways, and the record treats them differently.

1,425 bills were heard and then failed; 1,271 were never scheduled at all. A hearing leaves testimony and a record of who appeared. A bill that is never scheduled leaves nothing — no vote, no testimony, no stated reason.

The finding rests on a near-complete hearing record.

846 of the 848 bills that became law were publicly heard, a 99.8% control rate. Enacted bills are almost always heard, so a gap in the hearing data would surface here first. It does not, which is what makes the never-heard count believable rather than an artefact of missing records.

Most never-heard bills cannot be pinned to a committee.

874 of the 1,271 never-heard bills reached no committee agenda, so the record carries no committee to attribute them to. The by-committee table below therefore covers 397 bills, and its counts are floors rather than totals.

This is a count, not an accusation.

Declining to hear a bill is a normal and necessary part of managing 3,544 of them in a single session. This report measures where bills stopped, not whether any decision to stop one was justified.

Source WA Legislature legislation and hearing records · as of 2026-08-12

02

Where 3,544 bills stopped

Every bill introduced in the 2023-24 session, by what happened to it.

Source WA Legislature bill status, hearing and committee-action records · as of 2026-08-12 · n 3,544 bills · definitions

03

By committee

The committee each never-heard bill was last associated with, ordered by count. The design ranks committees by the share of bills referred to them that never got a hearing; the referral count is not in this release — the referral join is not built — so the share column is not printed and no committee is ranked by rate. Volume matters: a committee handling hundreds of bills in a 105-day session cannot hear them all.

Source WA Legislature committee agendas and bill location codes · as of 2026-08-12 · rows top 20 committees by count · absent bills referred per committee, and therefore the share never heard — the referral join is not built · note a bill referred to two committees is attributed to the one it was last with · definitions

04

By legislator

Two different measures, deliberately kept apart. Conflating them is the most common error in coverage of this subject.

As chair — bills not scheduled

Bills referred to a committee this member chaired that received no hearing. Chairs control the agenda, so this is the gatekeeping measure.

As sponsor — own bills not heard

Bills this member introduced that never got a hearing. This measures a member’s standing with leadership, not their own gatekeeping. A high number here is not a finding about the member’s conduct.

Source WA Legislature bill sponsorship records · as of 2026-08-12 · rows top 25 prime sponsors by count · absent the as-chair measure — no chair-tenure record for the biennium

05

Definitions

What was counted, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.

A bill

One bill number in one biennium, with its substitutes and engrossed versions counted as the same bill. Bill numbers are reused between sessions, so the number alone is not an identifier.

Public hearing

A committee meeting where this bill was on the agenda and the meeting type is recorded as Public — the stage at which testimony is taken.

Executive session

A committee meeting where the committee votes. Counted separately. A bill that reached executive session without a public hearing is not counted as heard.

Died

The session ended and no chapter number or effective date is on record. Only ever assigned once a biennium is over.

Never heard

Died, with no public hearing on record in either chamber.

Gatekeeping

The exercise of scheduling discretion over whether a referred bill is heard. Used descriptively. It is a normal legislative function — a committee cannot hear everything referred to it — and this report measures where it happened, not whether it was justified.

06

Method and limitations

Each of these is a number a reader might reasonably expect. None of them follow from the records we hold, so we do not publish them.

Who decided not to hear a bill

Committee chairs control agendas, but the record contains no decision to attribute. A non-decision leaves no document, and we will not infer one from a roster.

Whether a bill deserved a hearing

Not a question the record can answer. Many bills are introduced to make a point, and their sponsors would say the same.

Whether the rate is unusual

We hold one completed session. Comparing sessions needs more of them loaded, and comparing states needs data we do not have.

Whether lobbying influenced any of it

The L-2 summary feed we hold carries no bill column, so there is no link to follow from a filing to a bill. That is a limit of the extract, not a statement that no filing anywhere names a bill.

A rate for the current session

The 2023-24 figures are final because that session has ended. The sitting session yields a not-heard-yet rate, which is a different measurement, and we publish it as such.

Known limitation — a cancelled hearing still counts as heard

A bill counts as heard when it appears on a published committee agenda for a public hearing. The agenda feed carries a cancellation flag and it is set on none of the 94,681 hearing rows we hold, so a hearing cancelled after its agenda went out is indistinguishable from one that happened. The share that died unheard is therefore a floor: the true figure is somewhat higher, never lower.

Known limitation — companion bills are counted separately

A policy introduced in both chambers is two bill numbers and counts twice. That is correct for measuring what committees did, because two committees made two decisions, and wrong for counting distinct policies. Nothing on this page is a count of policies.

07

Reproduce this

The classifier, in full. Every figure above follows from it.

-- a bill = one bill_number in one biennium
-- enacted = a chapter number or an effective date is on record
-- died    = the session has ended and it was not enacted
-- heard   = a hearing row exists with hearing_type = 'Public'

SELECT COUNT(*) died,
       SUM(CASE WHEN heard = 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) never_heard
FROM (
  SELECT l.bill_number,
         MAX(CASE WHEN l.status_location LIKE 'C %'
                    OR l.current_status LIKE 'Effective date%'
                  THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) enacted,
         MAX(CASE WHEN h.bill_number IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) heard
  FROM legislation l
  LEFT JOIN hearings h
    ON  h.bill_number = l.bill_number
    AND h.biennium    = l.biennium
    AND h.hearing_type = 'Public'
  WHERE l.biennium = '2023-24'
  GROUP BY l.bill_number
)
WHERE enacted = 0;

The join carries the biennium on every clause. Bill numbers are recycled between sessions, so a join on the number alone silently merges two different bills.

Cite this report

This is public-records reporting. Use it, and say where it came from.

“What Died in Committee — Washington’s 2023-24 Legislative Session,” WashingtonIndependents.org, data as of 2026-08-12, accessed 2026-10-03. https://washingtonindependents.org/reports/what-died-in-committee-2023-24/

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Our tables, figures and notes on this page are released under CC BY 4.0 — reuse them, including commercially, with attribution. The underlying records are public records of the State of Washington and were never ours to license.

08

Where this page comes from

Every figure above is read from a primary source and rebuilt on a schedule. Nothing here is modelled or inferred; where a source is silent the page says so rather than filling the gap.

WA Legislature legislation service

Every bill in the session, its versions, sponsor and status.

WA Legislature committee hearing records

Every committee agenda appearance, and whether each was a public hearing or an executive session.

Classification

Ours, not the Legislature’s. The rule is published in full above.

Not loaded

Testimony, committee votes by member, bill text, and fiscal notes.