Senate hears bill authorizing criminal justice sales tax

The Senate Law & Justice committee heard a bill that would allow cities to impose a sales tax to fund employment of additional law enforcement officers.

SB 5361, sponsored by Jeff Holy (R–Spokane), is a bipartisan effort to address the shortage of law enforcement officers in Washington. Cities employ the most law enforcement officers in Washington state and are struggling to keep up with community needs.

This bill would authorize cities to impose an additional 0.1% sales tax for employing additional commissioned law enforcement officers. All of the revenues would need to go toward employing additional officers unless the local commissioned rate (number of officers per 1000 population) is greater than the national average, in which case the tax dollars could go towards “criminal justice purposes.” Criminal justice purposes would include activities that have a reasonable relationship to reducing the number of people interacting with the criminal justice system – such as reducing homelessness and improving community behavioral health.

The bill also eliminates the 25% cost-sharing requirement by the Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) for law enforcement training and would require the CJTC to provide up to 25 basic law enforcement training classes per fiscal year beginning in FY 2024 and up to 27 classes in FY 2025.

SB 5361 passed out of committee and was referred to Ways & Means.