S-4663.2
SUBSTITUTE SENATE BILL 5784
State of Washington
69th Legislature
2026 Regular Session
By Senate State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections (originally sponsored by Senator Hasegawa)
READ FIRST TIME 02/04/26.
AN ACT Relating to agency demographic data collection; reenacting and amending RCW 28A.300.042 ; and adding a new chapter to Title 42 RCW.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. The legislature finds that the state uses demographic data to measure the efficacy of state-supported programs and determine equity of opportunity and access to many state programs. The legislature further finds that chapter 310, Laws of 2021 instructed the joint legislative audit and review committee to perform racial equity analyses as part of its audits of state agencies and programs, yet the committee is unable to fulfill this mandate because most state agencies do not collect the necessary data to fulfill this mission.
The legislature further finds that the federal government office of management and budget published statistical policy directive number 15: Standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting federal data on race and ethnicity, the goal of which is to ensure the comparability of race and ethnicity across federal data sets and to maximize the quality of the data by ensuring the format, language, and procedures for collecting the data are consistent. While statistical policy directive number 15 provides a minimum set of categories that all federal agencies must use when collecting information on race and ethnicity, that minimum is insufficient for the state of Washington because of its great diversity of ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.