Washington state has many different ways to participate in the legislative process, including submitting written testimony as part of a committee hearing.  Written testimony is available to all committee members, as well as other legislators who want to look at it, so can be an effective way of getting them to hear your opinions.  Testifying live, either iin person or remotely, can be even more impactful than written testimony, but it requires a lot more advance planning, and you have to be available during the hearing, and for many of us it’s a lot more stressful.  Submitting written testimony is just a little more work than signing in, and you can do it before or up to 24 hours after a hearing, so it’s a lot more convenient than testifying live.

To submit written testimony bill, you first need to find the appopriate page for that bill and the hearing.  Often, action items will include a direct link.  If you don’t have a link, it takes a bit of work to find the signin page; skip down to Finding the ‘Written testimony’ page for detailed instructions.

Written Testimony

You should see a Committee Sign In – Written Testimony near the top of the page.  Right below that is information about the committee, hearing date, and bill.  Double-check these to make sure this is the ill you want to provide testiomony on!  There’s also am important privacy notice, reminding you that this information part of the legislative record and a subject to public disclosure under chapter 42.56 RCW (Public Records Act).

Start by choosing your position.  Pro means you support the bill; Con means you oppose it.  You can also choose Other, which lets legislators know you’re interested in the bill, although that’s fairly rare for signins (although it’s more common for written testimony).

Once you’ve chosen your position, fill out the rest of the form.  Most of the fields are mandatory — even phone number (although I don’t know what happens if you put in a directory assistance number).  Your actual testimony goes in the text box labelled

*Written Testimony (TEXT REQUIRED, 5000 character limit, which includes spaces): (5000 characters remaining)*

If got formatting in your tesitmony, or more than 5000 characters, you can upload a PDF file instead.

Below this, you may well see a CAPTCHA that you need to click on to prove you’re not a robot.  Once you’ve done that, click on Submit Registration and you’re done.

Optional: creating an account to record your testimony and signins

Creating an account on the legislature’s site lets you track the history of all the bills you’ve provided testimony or signed in onduring a session, and can also be useful if you want to change your position on a bill.  If you want to create an account, you can click the Log In button on any signin page, and then click on the link saying Sign up now.

That said, you don’t have to create an account if you don’t want to. It’s not clear what additional privacy risks creating an account exposes you to, so it might not be worth it.

Finding the ‘Written testimony’ page

If you don’t have a direct link to the signin page, you can go to the “Committee Sign In” page on the legislature’s site (https://app.leg.wa.gov/csi) to start the process of finding the hearing where the bill is being considered. [Bill pages on legislature’s site have information about what committee is hearing the bill and when the hearing is, but as far as I know there’s no way to get from there directly to the signin page.]

First, you need to choose which chamber or agency is hearing the bill.  Once you choose either House or Senate, it will take you to a more detailed page.

• Start by selecting the committee from the first menu
• Once you select a committee, you’ll need to select the time and date from the menu for upcoming meetings
• Once you select a meeting, ou’ll get a list of agenda items — hopefully including the bill you want to comment on. Click on it to select it.
• Then choose the type of testimony — “I would like to provide written testimony.”

Here’s what it looked like for HB 1155 (My Health My Data) January 24 hearing in the House Civil Rights & Judiciary Committee.

You can also choose to sign in to the haring by clicksing “I would like my position noted for the legislative record.”  It’s easy enough to do, and another way to show your support for the bill.  It’s a similar form, without the text box for your testimony.