Affordability in Name, Not in Practice: What Governor Ferguson’s 2026 Agenda Tells Us — and What It Doesn’t

By: Jessie Simmons
Category: Affordability and Cost of Living

Governor Bob Ferguson has released his slate of six Governor Request Bills for the 2026 legislative session, framing them as a package that will improve housing, affordability, government efficiency, health, and public safety for Washingtonians. In isolation, many of these proposals are defensible. Some are even constructive. Taken together, however, they tell a familiar story about how affordability is being defined in Olympia — and where it continues to fall short.

This agenda is consistent with what we have already seen in pre-filed legislation and recent sessions. It reflects Phase One affordability thinking: expand access, add funding, improve process, and assume costs will eventually stabilize. That approach has merit. It also has limits.

To understand why, it helps to look at the proposals through the lens of the everyday budget pressures Washington families actually feel.

On housing, the governor’s package makes one meaningful structural move. Requiring local governments to allow residential and mixed-use housing in commercial zones addresses land scarcity, a real contributor to long-term housing costs. This builds on prior legislative progress around middle housing and ADUs and acknowledges that supply matters.

But land availability is only one piece of the affordability equation. These bills do not address the dominant cost drivers that determine whether housing can be built at attainable prices: impact fees, local permitting delays, parking mandates, SEPA exposure, and cumulative building and energy code requirements. Allowing housing in more places does not make housing affordable if the cost to entitle and construct it remains unchanged.

The permitting and licensing reform bill sends an important signal about accountability and transparency. Published timelines and fee refunds for missed deadlines are steps in the right direction. But the bill applies only to state agencies. The most consequential delays for housing, child care facilities, and small businesses still occur at the local level, where this proposal does not reach.

On child care, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program account expands access to subsidized care for some families, which is meaningful for those households. It does not, however, reduce the underlying cost of providing child care across the system. Staffing ratios, licensing requirements, facility standards, zoning barriers, and insurance costs remain untouched. This is relief, not reform.

Energy affordability, one of the fastest-rising household costs in Washington, is not addressed at all. None of the request bills engage with utility rates, electrification costs, energy code impacts, or the compounding effect of climate compliance on housing and operating expenses. For renters and homeowners alike, this omission is significant.

Health care affordability fares no better. The proposal regarding vaccine recommendations and preventive services focuses on governance and authority, not on reducing premiums, deductibles, or out-of-pocket costs. At best, it stabilizes coverage. It does not lower household health care spending.

Transportation costs, another major household budget driver, are also absent from the request bill package. While the governor has referenced transportation investments elsewhere, nothing in this slate reduces commuting costs, vehicle expenses, or transit affordability.

Viewed collectively, these bills do not meaningfully reduce the recurring costs that dominate family budgets. They improve access, governance, and process. They do not bend the cost curve.

This is not unique to the governor’s agenda. It mirrors the pattern seen in pre-filed bills and recent legislative sessions. Affordability is treated as a function of permission, funding, and efficiency rather than as a problem of cumulative policy cost. Subsidies are used to offset prices rather than policies being evaluated for how they raise them.

That brings us to the harder question: what would a governor who is truly serious about affordability be doing differently?

A serious affordability agenda would not stop at allowing more housing. It would pair land-use reform with cost containment. That means moderating impact fee growth, enforcing local permit timelines, limiting duplicative environmental review, reforming parking mandates, and evaluating how layered building and energy codes interact in practice.

A serious child care strategy would not rely solely on subsidies. It would examine workforce credentialing flexibility, facility zoning, and regulatory requirements that drive costs for every provider and family.

A serious energy affordability plan would acknowledge the household cost implications of policy choices and pursue rate moderation, phased compliance, or consumer-side relief.

A serious health care affordability agenda would target premiums, cost sharing, and access to care, not just authority structures.

Most importantly, a governor serious about affordability would treat it as a cross-cutting principle, not a talking point. Every major policy proposal would be evaluated not only for its intent, but for its impact on household budgets.

Washington has made real progress in recent years, especially on housing permission reforms. Phase One mattered. But Phase Two is about cost. Until leadership is willing to confront the policies that make everyday life expensive, affordability will remain something we talk about far more than something families actually experience.

Progress matters. Results matter more.