HB 2006 Concerning court interpreters, by request of the Administrative Office of the Courts.

The statute must be updated to correctly reflect the current operations of the courts and modern practices in the field of language access. That includes updating the statute to align with federal law, which requires courts to provide interpreters in civil cases at no cost to litigants. It also modernizes the terminology to reflect language currently used in courts and provides additional flexibility to AOC to administer our Language Access and Interpreter Reimbursement Program. This program reimburses courts for language access-related expenses and these changes would help us more efficiently and effectively distribute existing state funding.

Status: Died in committee.

SB 5810 Clarifying the collective bargaining unit for interpreters providing language access services to certain state agencies.

This is a housekeeping bill. References to appointments are removed from the statute relating to the appropriate bargaining unit for spoken language interpreters providing services for DSHS, DCYF, and Medicaid enrollees. The removal of the term “appointments” addresses interpreter services not considered appointments, sometimes referred to as on-demand interpreting services, which are not covered in the current CBA (except for Facility DSHS and DCYF Block Appointments, in-person DCYF or DSHS appointments scheduled on-site for a specific time period).

Status: Died in committee.

SB 5995 Creating a professional license for spoken language interpreters and translators.

This bill transfers the testing and credentialing of contracted interpreters and translators out of DSHS and into the Department of Licensing. This is an emergency bill due to the unprecedented loss of credentialed medical interpreters and the accompanying decrease in the fill rates.

Background. DSHS has been testing and credentialing social services interpreters since 1993, medical interpreters since 1995 and document translators since 1996. All testing stopped in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing resumed in April 2022 but in August 2022, DSHS decided to stop offering its own medical interpreter exams and instead accept more expensive and less rigorous private third-party testing (DSHS Medical Recognized) over which it has no jurisdiction:

• By a private for-profit company, ALTA, that also sells interpreter services in violation of RCW 74.04.25(9), and that does not test in the sight translation mode; or
• The written exam in English − without requiring an oral exam of interpreting skills in the consecutive and sight translation modes − from the two national healthcare interpreter certification bodies, CCHI and NBCMI, both private entities whose main source of income is testing interpreters and over which WA State has no jurisdiction. DSHS’s rationale for not requiring that oral transfer skills be tested is that CCHI and NBCMI pre-requisites include proof of language proficiency even though this “proof” ranges from living in a country where that language is spoken to actual testing.

Washington State used to have more credentialed interpreters than California, the most populous state. Under the management of the DSHS Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, WA State has lost more than 1/3 of its credentialed medical interpreters. In December 2019, there were 2,825 DSHS medical certified and authorized interpreters. In January 2024, there were only 1,731.

Status: Died in committee.

In solidarity with our interpreter siblings in Oregon now represented by AFSCME 75

SB 1578 directs the Oregon Health Authority to establish and maintain an online portal with the functionality to provide online scheduling for health care providers and coordinated care organizations to use to contact health care interpreters directly for purposes of serving Oregon Health Plan members and to process billing for health care interpreter services that were rendered to Oregon Health Plan members.

Status: The bill was signed by the Governor and goes into effect on June 6, 2024.