Auburn revises legislative wish list ahead of session
Published 11:30 am Thursday, January 15, 2026
The City of Auburn revealed in early December 2025 what it intended to ask of lawmakers in Olympia during the legislative session in 2026.
But the wish list from city leaders has changed a bit, with revisions ranging from removal of items to tightening up the language here and there.
For example, while the city will still ask the state to provide funding to fill police vacancies in Auburn and statewide, that request has been combined with a formerly separate ask to fund officer recruitment, training and wellness programs for police agencies statewide.
The Auburn City Council first discussed the city’s legislative priorities during a study session on Dec. 8 at Auburn City Hall and adopted it on Jan. 12.
Here is a handful of the items Mayor Nancy Backus presented to the council on Monday, which had to be approved in time to meet the Legislature’s 60-day session that began on Jan. 12.
Auburn will ask the state to forward specific language to the city about interviewing juveniles to discern their involvement in criminal activities, and for the state to work with cities to make technical fixes to vaguely-worded, conflicting or confusing state bills.
Because of ongoing public safety issues related to illegal drug use, the city will ask the state to restore drug-free school zones, to extend them into community parks, and to seek continued funding for therapeutic courts, recovery programs in jails, and after-treatment support.
One significant change is that the city has removed “impacts to towing companies” stemming from the Seattle v. Long decision in 2021. Auburn officials say the city has been forced to spend more money on towing services, so it had intended to ask the state to provide additional dedicated funding to cities for towing services, or an increase in funding to the state reimbursement account.
In the Seattle v. Long decision, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that that city’s impounding of a truck that a homeless man was using as a home, and charging him for towing fees, was “unconstitutionally excessive.” In its decision, the court concluded that the truck qualified as a homestead, and Seattle’s actions had deprived Long of his means of making a living.
The city said in December that it would ask lawmakers to reject any bill or action that puts extensive restrictions on the use of Flock cameras or other automated license plate reading equipment. Further restrictions, the city says, would make it harder for police to find criminals, missing and vulnerable people and locating stolen vehicles.
The updated language now calls for the state to work to minimize changes to the use of Flock or other automatic license plate reader (ALPR) equipment, while “providing protections regarding disclosure of domestic violence or other crime victim information and to work on language that provides guidelines for use.”
This go-around, the city will not ask the state for additional funding to implement the new law known informally as the “Blake fix,” as it had earlier said it would.
“It has been removed … owing to the ongoing support for therapeutic boards, recovery programs in jails and after-treatment support,” Backus said.
Backus said the city has removed regulatory and land use issues from its requests.
“We kept the section on indigent defense compliance with new case loads, as we have discussed with council, (seeking) a reduction in the number of cases that a public defender is able to take on in a year over the next 10 years to reduce the burden by two-thirds in total and by 10% each year,” Backus said.
There are fears, Backus said on Jan. 8, that “in the upcoming session lawmakers will place more restrictions” on the use of business and occupation taxes. She noted that because of vaguely-worded, conflicting, and confusing language in state bills, “all of the cities that submitted the sales tax for approval (in 2025) were declined, even though they met the letter of the law. We’re seeking more clarity on those items,” Backus said.
