WA Majority Leader apologizes for being intoxicated during budget hearing

(The Center Square) - House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle, admits he was intoxicated during a House Appropriations Committee meeting on Wednesday evening.

So much so that the committee chair at one point called a recess to take him out of the hearing room, only to have him return moments later.

The 4 p.m. hearing was an executive session on House Bill 2289: Making 2025-2027 fiscal biennium supplemental operating appropriation.

Just over two hours into the debate, Fitzgibbon was offering final remarks on the proposed budget.

He appeared glassy eyed, with speech slurred as he urged support for the legislation.

“I am grateful to all the members of this committee, all the members of the House for putting forward their ideas and making sure that the operating budget that we’ve put forward does not forget that the people we are working to represent, people that we are working to lift up and support don’t always have a voice in this process, and their voice is carried forward by the members of this body,” said Fitzgibbon, who was not wearing a suit coat and whose hair appeared disheveled.

On Thursday morning, The Center Square reached out to Fitzgibbon’s office via email and received a response that read:

“I made a poor choice last night by drinking alcohol before we had finished our work for the day,” Fitzgibbon wrote. “I am disappointed in myself and take responsibility for that poor choice. It won’t happen again, and I’m committed to completing my work this session without alcohol.”

GOP lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee told The Center Square it was obvious the majority leader was intoxicated. 

Several members who did not want to be identified said everyone knew Fitzgibbon was impaired. “Could he have passed a BAC [blood alcohol level]? I doubt it,” one Republican member posed to The Center Square.

Another member said the chair of the committee called a recess earlier in the hearing … to “deal with Fitzgibbon,” but the majority leader soon returned to his seat.

Republican Rep. Michelle Valdez, formerly Caldier, from Gig Harbor, who is also on the committee, spoke about the incident with the Center Square.

Rep. Michelle Valdez (R-Gig Harbor) reacts to the news that Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D- West Seattle) was intoxicated during a budget hearing.

“The sad part is you have to understand: He is responsible for our state and for Washington Democrats and also for our state budget,” said Valdez. “He has so much power, and it is so disenfranchising to know that he’s drunk on the job.

She continued: “To be honest, if I was in charge of our state budget and destroying the state, I’d probably drink too."

Valdez noted that the committee chair, Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, could have made the decision NOT to allow Fitzgibbon to speak in the hearing, as they knew he was intoxicated. 

Ormsby had his own public embarrassment with a rollover crash in 2018 in which he was arrested for DUI.

At the time, Democrat leadership debated whether to strip Ormsby of his chairmanship on House Appropriations but ultimately allowed him to retain the position.

Meantime, Senate Bill 5067 to lower the state blood alcohol level for DUI to .05, down from the current .08, passed the full Senate, but did not receive a vote this week out of the House Committee on Community Safety.