The bill creates a new state law by adding a new chapter to Title 36 RCW that establishes a county local road program and a county local road trust account in the motor vehicle fund. Trust account money must be spent only for preservation and improvement of county local roads and for board expenses to administer the program; the account is subject to allotment procedures under chapter 43.88 RCW and requires legislative appropriation for expenditures. The county road administration board must adopt rules to implement the chapter, allocate trust account funds to counties, select projects using specified minimum criteria, and include a program status report in its annual report to the legislature. The act takes effect July 1, 2025 and includes an emergency clause. The law creates procedural and funding rules rather than new criminal penalties. It requires projects to be listed in a county’s six-year program before board approval and authorizes the board to allocate funds for construction when preliminary proposals are complete, reserve funds for future years, and consider emergent projects outside the six-year program under constraints. Eligible project types are defined broadly to include 2-R, 3-R, reconstruction (as defined in the WSDOT local agency guidelines manual), bridge replacement on the national bridge inventory, removal of human-made impediments to anadromous fish passage, and pedestrian facilities. When projects are adjacent to cities/towns or connect to a state highway construction project, the county must jointly plan with city/town officials or the WSDOT district administrator. The bill establishes eligibility and matching requirements: counties must generally have spent road revenues only for road purposes during the prior 12 months to receive trust funds (with specified exemptions, including counties with population under 8,000 and counties with voter authorization to spend road revenues on other services), and counties must provide matching funds to be set by board rule after the board conducts studies of county financial resources. The affected entities include the county road administration board, counties, cities and towns, and the Washington State Department of Transportation. Important details not included in the provided text are the new chapter’s exact number in Title 36 RCW, the LAG manual definitions for 2-R/3-R/reconstruction, the specific matching fund amounts or formulas, and detailed rulemaking criteria such as priority scoring and allocation increase procedures.

The bill creates a new, state-managed source of money for county local road preservation and improvements and for the board’s program administration, with the county road administration board deciding which county projects get funded starting July 1, 2025. Counties must include proposed projects in their existing six-year road programs and coordinate with nearby cities or the Department of Transportation when projects touch those jurisdictions; eligible projects include common road rehabilitation types, bridge replacements on the national bridge inventory, fish-passage removals, and pedestrian facilities. The trust account is inside the motor vehicle fund, is subject to allotment procedures and requires a legislative appropriation, and the board can stage approvals, reserve funds, and consider emergent needs outside the six-year plan. Counties are the primary actors affected: only counties that have used road revenues exclusively for road purposes in the prior year will generally qualify for these funds, with exemptions for very small counties (under 8,000) and those with voter-approved revenue diversions, and recipients will be required to provide matching funds whose size will be set after board-conducted financial studies, so local cost shares are likely but currently unspecified. The county road administration board gains new allocation, rulemaking, and reporting responsibilities, and cities, towns, and WSDOT must join planning when projects adjoin or connect to state highways. Key implementation details that remain unclear from the extracted text include the matching formulas, priority scoring and selection rules, and some technical definitions referenced to other documents.