We are excited to see so many conversations and ideas taking place this session about investment in public safety and adding more police officers in our state.

One of those ideas includes HB 1896, sponsored by Rep. Hunter Abell (R–Kettle Falls) will be heard in committee this week.

The bill seeks to incentivize cities and counties to increase the employment of additional commissioned law enforcement officers via a one tenth of a percent local option sales tax that is a credit against the state sales tax.

This investment represents significant revenue for some of our cities, such as those with a decent sales tax base. However, it’s not an ideal fit for every community. We are asking for some improvements to the bills as follows.

Three talking points to improve the bills for cities:

• Remove national average provision: We ask that legislators untangle the funding from the national average per capita threshold. This would allow a little flexibility for a community to determine how many officers it needs, because 2.3 officers/1,000 might not be the magic number in all communities.
• Provide more funding flexibility: We ask for funding flexibility, which would help to hire more critical officers, but also give flexibility for cities to fund the other half of the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, courts, etc.
• Allow funding to also retain officers: Flexibility would also help fund current officers in addition to hiring new “additional officers,” as worded in the bill.

Additionally, the bill seeks to increase the number of basic law enforcement training academy (BLEA) classes, which we support.

We thank the sponsors of these bills and look forward to continuing conversations that address these significant investments in public safety in our communities.

Dates to remember

HB 1896 will be heard on February 21 at 1:30 pm in the House Finance Committee.