2024 Legislative Priorities

For the 2024 session, LCA is asking state policymakers to:

1. Fund Small Business Programs
   The success of Latino small businesses is a critical component of Washington State's economic well-being. Small business owners must be able to have access to state and federal capital and operating funding.
2. Fund Labor Pre - Apprenticeship Programs
   Close essential skill gaps and meet evolving diversity workforce needs by supporting continuous improvement and fund pre- apprenticeship programs that include a career pathway strategy for basic skill instruction, job training, and support services.
3. Fund Adolescent & Youth Behavioral Health Inpatient & Substance Abuse Programs
   Fund adequate behavioral health inpatient services for adolescents and youth that are in crisis and have a history of violence. We need to streamline the process to address the admissions barriers that prevent children from receiving program services by county and state funded and private pay providers in WA state.
4. Fund cultural-led youth violence prevention and intervention Programs
   Youth and gun violence is a significant public health crisis that affects thousands of young people each day in and, in turn, their families, schools, and communities. The Washington Legislature should fund a continuum of care that provides culturally relevant wrap around services to youth.
5. Fund Opioid/Fentanyl Outreach/Education Programs
   Address Opioid/Fentanyl overdose crisis. This includes an investment of over 5 years, in innovative community-led harm reduction, treatment, and prevention, outreach and education projects, with a specific focus on those at greatest risk of substance-related harms, including youth and Indigenous Peoples, and providing funding to improve access to evidence-based addictions treatment services.
6. Fund U.S. resettlement and asylum systems & Programs
   Work together to uphold refugees and asylums humanitarian response to refugees through the U.S. Resettlement Program (USRP) Washington State should provide short and long term job readiness & employment, financial, medical, housing assistance to new arrivals, as well as case management and wrap around services, English as a foreign language classes, all designed to facilitate refugees successful transition in the U.S., and help them to attain self-sufficiency and economic stability.