Two bills currently moving through the House and Senate would change the state’s Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML) law in different ways. AWC urges you to contact your local legislators to ensure that changes to the program do not increase premium rates, unduly increase employer costs, or threaten the viability of this critical new program.

As we wrote in early February, HB 1073 has been amended to primarily provide temporary relief for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic by allowing temporary alternative eligibility metrics to help employees qualify for the program when they otherwise could not during the pandemic. This is a far cry from the original bill that would have dramatically and permanently increased eligibility, expanded job protection provisions to small employers, and required continuation of health coverage. Given the limited, temporary impact of the bill due to the new amendments, AWC has shifted from “opposed” to “neutral” on the bill. The bill is currently in the House Rules Committee and has not yet been pulled to the floor.

SB 5097, however, remains problematic for cities. As we wrote in mid-February, this bill broadens the definition of “family member,” expands job protection coverage to small employers, and requires continued medical benefits coverage well beyond what the program currently requires. These provisions could hit both employers and employees with future premium increases, could increase challenges for cities in backfilling additional personnel on leave, and will expand health benefit costs and onerous job protection requirements to small cities and temporary and short-time employees. AWC opposes this bill in its current form. SB 5097 is currently on the Senate floor calendar and could be scheduled for a vote at any time.

Both bills suffer from the same problem: neither was vetted by the PFML advisory committee prior to being introduced. The PFML advisory committee was created by the original PFML law to develop improvements to the program, assess the impacts of various policy proposals, and protect the long-term health of the program. Lacking a thorough review of the bills by the advisory committee, it is difficult to determine exactly what the impacts to the long-term functioning of the PFML program could be.

As a result, AWC urges caution in moving ahead on major, permanent changes to a PFML program that only began paying out benefits a little over a year ago. PFML is still new and the only data we have on the program was generated during a pandemic year that no policymakers could have anticipated when designing the program. Legislators must be careful about making too many changes that could harm the long-term viability of this critical program. Since both bills could potentially see floor action at any time, now is a critical moment for cities to engage. We urge you to contact your local legislators about the potential impacts of these bills. AWC asks cities to:

• Reiterate to legislators that if they must pass PFML legislation this year for pandemic response, of the two bills, the current version of HB 1073 is the most targeted to pandemic response and is the least likely to cause long term problems for the PFML program and for stakeholders.
• Tell legislators to oppose SB 5097 at this time because we do not know what permanent changes to PFML could do to the program’s long-term health. No one wants negative impacts to PFML that could leave Washington families without critical benefits in years to come.
• Urge legislators to send all future changes to the PFML advisory committee for review so the Employment Security Department and PFML stakeholders have a chance to evaluate the impacts and suggest improvements, as the PFML law originally intended.