Several hundred new laws went into effect in Washington this week. Since the end of the 2019 session in Olympia, the 43rd District lawmakers, all Democrats, have been touting their achievements in a year in which they passed a statewide budget and wielded hefty majorities in each chamber.

The 43rd District includes Downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, First Hill, Madison Park, and South Lake Union, and boasts three powerful lawmakers in Olympia. Sen. Jamie Pedersen chairs his chamber’s Law and Justice Committee. Rep. Nicole Macri, who continues the tradition of more than 30 years of the seat being held by an openly gay person, is vice chair of the Health Care and Wellness Committee and has been an outspoken proponent of reform in the housing sector since being elected in 2016. And this year marked Rep. Frank Chopp’s last session as Speaker of the House, a position he had held alone since 2002.

Pedersen has highlighted such disparate work as the Legislature’s move to keep firearms out of the hands of people who have a history of violent acts, which he co-sponsored, to the creation of a state LGBTQ commission and increase energy efficiency in buildings and appliances.

But in an interview, Pedersen, who lives on Capitol Hill, said the biggest accomplishment personally was a measure to, after years of stalled efforts, reform condo liability laws that allowed condo owners to easily sue builders over minor defects in construction and deterred developers from building the middle-income housing units that gave first-time homebuyers a cheaper alternative to a single-family house and gave empty nesters a smaller ownership option.

“That I hope will be a significant help with increasing the supply, particularly of mid-market condos in suburban areas, and ultimately will help with housing affordability in the region,” said Pedersen, the lead sponsor of the legislation who led a work session of his committee on the issue of condo liability more than a year ago.

Macri said the most important achievements of the session were in Olympia’s actions to improve access to higher education and address the affordable housing crisis and homelessness, but wrote in a text, “this is a hard question because we passed a lot of big legislation this session.”

The Workforce Education Investment Act, of which Macri was a co-sponsor, is set to close the State Need Grant waitlist and expand eligibility under the Washington College Grant program, “providing access to college to approx 100k WA students,” according to Macri. It passed on a primarily party-line vote in both chambers on Apr. 28, the last day of the session.

Macri also said the most significant housing bill was an effort to reform the eviction system. The legislation will, among other things, extend the three-day pay or vacate notice period to 14 days and create a uniform notice that includes information on how tenants can access legal resources, according to a legislative analysis.

She also noted that the Legislature passed several ‘first in the nation’ measures in 2019, including the Long Term Care Trust Act to “help protect families from the high cost of providing care for their loved ones as they age,” according to a Macri blog post.

Macri says her favorite moment of the session came on the last weekend as the House worked through the night voting on legislation, but paused to don mustaches to honor Chopp, who is resigning as speaker but will remain in the Legislature.

“Our state is better off because of his leadership,” Macri wrote in a Facebook post. “Thank you, Frank!”

Introducing his first bill since before assuming the speakership, Chopp led a bipartisan effort requested by Gov. Jay Inslee to develop a teaching hospital at the University of Washington that will provide inpatient care for 150 people receiving care under the Involuntary Treatment Act. This would aim to attack the state’s mental health crisis from two sides by both training a workforce that’s facing a shortage and treating a fair amount of patients.

The bill passed unanimously in both chambers, requiring the UW School of Medicine to develop a plan and site the facility and report back to the Legislature by Dec. 1.

Pedersen answered the question of his favorite moment of the session with one that happened around the same time as Macri, but with one notable difference.

“Other than when we adjourned?,” Pedersen asked. “And I don’t mean that in a completely joking way. This is my 13th session, this was the first time since my first session in 2007 when we got all of our budgets done and balanced and got done on time” in a budget year.

More seriously, he added that the most satisfying bill he saw pass was one that eliminated the philosophical or personal exemption for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine amid a sizeable outbreak of measles in Clark County.

His top priorities going forward are in ensuring that his major overhaul of guardianship statutes gets implemented well when it goes into effect Jan. 1, 2021 and the funding of K-12 special education, which he called a piece of “unfinished business” from this year’s legislative session.

Macri listed several priorities for 2020, including working on housing policy and rent control — a practice District 3 Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant wishes to see allowed by the state — as well as increasing access to reproductive and “end of life” care. Before the session begins in January, she will be serving on the Universal Healthcare Workgroup, the LGBTQ Commission, and the implementation committee for the Long Term Care Trust Act, she says.

Pedersen, reached earlier this month by phone in Alaska, mentioned the legislative turmoil in that state and Oregon, where Republican lawmakers fled the state to block a climate change bill.

“When you look at that and look at what’s going on in D.C., you just think ‘Wow, like, not everything is perfect, obviously, but how lucky we are to be in a place where we are super focused on trying to make things better and the place actually is working reasonably well,” he said. “So I think it’s a good time to be serving.”