Sen. Marko Liias hosts coffee chat, addresses issues with residents

State Sen. Marko Liias (D-Edmonds) hosted an informal coffee chat with 11 attendees at the Edmonds Waterfront Center Sunday afternoon. 

Liias, who represents the 21st District, fielded a range of questions over coffee and cookies. One attendee addressed the lack of recycling requirements for apartment residents in Edmonds. “There are no recycling containers at apartment buildings,” she said. “Condos, yes. Private homes, yes. But apartment buildings, no. So my husband and I are anal about this, and we collect all our things in these separate containers and take them up to 212th Street (the location of Snohomish County’s Southwest Recycling and Transfer Facility).”

Liias said that Edmonds has a franchise agreement with Sound Disposal, and rates are regulated by the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission. He noted that multi-family buildings are often treated as commercial customers, so they end up on a different service line than single-family homes. 

He added that Legislature recently passed the “Re-Wrap Act” (SB 5284) to improve recycling rates by:

• Increasing pickup from multi-family and commercial sites
• Encouraging producers to use less packaging
• Shifting packaging toward recyclable materials

“I think in terms of when we get recycled here, it’s probably going to be a couple years,” Liias said. “Right now, we ship a lot of our solid waste out to rural areas or Oregon and bury them in the ground. And that is not sustainable in the long term when we could be recycling.”

Two Washington initiatives

Another attendee asked about the state’s Parental Rights Initiative and the initiative on transgender people’s participation in girls youth sports. These two initiatives were proposed by Let’s Go Washington founder Bryan Heywood.

On parental rights, Liias said that the Legislature already passed a previous citizens’ initiative on parents’ rights in education because lawmakers agreed parents are a key constituency after students. Afterward, the Legislature heard concerns that some parts of that law did not fit well with other rules, especially around health records. Liias said the Legislature tried to “adjust and mesh” some of feedback they had heard, such as parents’ rights to special education services and to educational materials in their own language if the parents don’t speak English.

Liias said the original initiative sponsors disliked those changes and are now pushing a new initiative to roll the law back.

“I personally think that the amendments and changes we made are good, that they make the Parents Rights Initiative clearer,” he said. “They include things like the right to access specialists, the right to get materials in other languages, things like that. So I have not signed that initiative. I would encourage people not to sign it because I don’t think that it’s necessary.”

On girls’ youth sports and transgender participation, Liias said the issue involves a relatively small number of students – about a dozen statewide –  and is highly localized. Therefore, he said local school boards and communities should set their own approaches rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all statewide mandate.

Several attendees argued that allowing transgender girls to compete in girls sports and use girls locker rooms threatens women’s rights, and they questioned why Democrats support that position. One person framed it as “boys in girls’ locker rooms and sports,” and said this position is “driving people away like crazy” from Democrats, including feminists. Others questioned whether minors are mature enough to make life‑altering decisions relating to gender‑related policies.

“I mean, we don’t let them drink till they’re 21. We don’t let them vote till they’re 18,” one attendee said. “They can make decisions on their body when they’re like 13?”

Liias said students should receive the appropriate educational environment for them. “We should make sure that we’re meeting the needs of each of our students, regardless of what their background or circumstance is,” he said. “There was a gap in providing educational services for trans youth. We’ve worked to make sure that those particular issues that impact families are addressed. The school-based health centers are not about providing gender-affirming care. They’re about making sure if there is access to behavioral health for kids [and] primary care for kids.”

Liias also mentioned SB 5599, which focuses on housing and shelter for homeless youth, not authorizing gender reassignment procedures. SB 5599 allows homeless youths to stay in shelters longer than 72 hours and requires efforts at family reunification, he said.

“I don’t have an opinion on what medical treatments young people should receive, if they can, from their doctor,” he said. “The standards of care that exist for the health condition that they’re seeking treatment for, and their family, their support, their caring network. So if a young person is transgender and wants to receive support and care in that process, that is for their doctor, for their caring community, their family, their loved ones, and them to make those decisions.”

Liias said voters can weigh in through elections and any initiatives that reach the ballot next November.

Transportation and employment

Regarding transportation, Liias said that missed sailings in Washington ferries are down over 90%, and cancellations on the Edmonds-Kingston route are “dramatically down.” He said the state has ordered three new, hybrid ferries to refresh an aging fleet.

In addition, traffic fatalities are down. “We had record-high traffic fatalities in 2023 the last two years,” Liias said. “We’ve seen 10% reductions. We’re back down to where we would be before the pandemic, and we got to keep going to our target of zero traffic fatalities.”

Liias said he was also working on the need to create jobs locally and affordability in housing, health care and food. He gave an example of a constituent who was facing debt. 

“Because they don’t have good health insurance, they ended up in debt over their medical bills,” he said. “And wage garnishment laws in this state mean that you can only keep about $500 a week, about $2,000 a month, before your wage is garnished. They [the constituent] thought we should raise that limit. We looked and saw a couple of states have a higher limit. So I’m going to propose to go to the higher limit. Not that people shouldn’t necessarily pay their debt, but we should be sure that they’re able to afford their rent, to stay in their home and to take care of the family first, especially because it’s probably going to be more uninsured folks.”

Driver’s education expansion

Liias talked about a new driver’s education requirement that requires new drivers up to age 21 to take a driver’s education course before they earn their license. This is in response to increased traffic fatalities in 2021 to 2023 due to DUI and speeding.

Liias said the driver’s education requirement would include a scholarship for those from low-income families. He said for 22- to 25-year-olds, driver’s education is not required up front, but if they get into a serious crash, they will be required to complete driver’s education.

“In the late ’90s, there was this sense that our public schools weren’t focusing enough on reading, writing and math, and that they were being asked to do too many extra things,” Liias said. “It was sort of an education reform that led to the state also subsidizing schools to teach drivers so that they didn’t have to charge the student the whole cost. That subsidy went away, and the sense that this was not a good use of our schools. They should be focused on other stuff.”

Liias said that this change pushed driving instruction out of public schools and into private, for‑profit driving schools, which makes access harder and more expensive. “We talked to more schools about it. Would they take this on? The answer was still a ‘no’,” he said. “That’s why we’re working to provide scholarships.”

Despite the disagreement among the attendees, Liias said he appreciated having a “non-structure conversation” that showed “our democracy in action,” “We all have to live here together. We all have to make this work together. And, you know, we don’t all have to agree to make it all work together,” he said. “But I do think we need to be able to sit down and look each other in the eye and talk about these issues one on one, and that’s part of why I’m glad we…have this opportunity.”