Substitute House Bill 1305 amends existing Washington statutes (RCW 57.22.020, 35.91.020, and 35.72.020) that govern reimbursement and latecomer fee contracts for water, sewer, and street facility extensions. It standardizes the maximum reimbursement period at 20 years, allows one or more extensions of that period to match the duration of moratoria, phasing ordinances, concurrency designations, or other governmental actions that prevent new development for six months or more, and provides a specific COVID-19 related extension for contracts approved before February 29, 2020 (an extension equal to February 29, 2020 through October 28, 2022 if requested by March 31, 2026). The bill requires contract extensions and contracts to be filed and recorded with the county auditor. The bill makes a number of procedural changes: contracts must require owners entitled to reimbursement to provide current contact information every two years; owners have 60 days to comply with each notice or the district or contracting municipality may collect any reimbursement funds owed and deposit them in its capital fund. Municipalities must, at an owner’s request and subject to specified conditions (plan approval, inspection, transfer without cost, security for completion, payment of municipal costs, and verification of costs), contract for owner-funded construction of required water or sewer facilities and may share reimbursement rights pro rata if they participate in financing. Owners must submit total project costs within 120 days of completion. The amended text also states there is no private right of action for damages against a municipality for failing to collect a latecomer fee and limits municipal liability for failing to collect to willful or intentional failures. This is a modification of existing law that primarily makes procedural and timing changes affecting reimbursement periods, extension rights, filing/recording, owner notification duties, collection procedures, and municipal liability. Some statutory text and definitions needed to fully interpret certain cross-references and the remainder of RCW 35.72.020 are missing from the provided material, so complete application details and certain referenced limits (for example, the full content of subsection (7) of RCW 35.91.020 and the truncated portion of Sec. 3) could not be confirmed from these excerpts.

If enacted, the bill makes reimbursements for owner-funded water, sewer, and street improvements run on a predictable 20-year schedule but lets that 20-year clock be paused for the length of government moratoria or similar actions (including a one-time COVID-era pause for qualifying pre-2020 contracts if owners ask by March 31, 2026). Property owners who build facilities will need to request contracts before municipal approval, record them with the county auditor, report total project costs within 120 days of completion, and every two years keep their contact information current — failing to do so lets the local district or municipality collect and keep any reimbursement money, which will go into the jurisdiction’s capital fund. The groups most affected are property owners who pay to build required infrastructure, water-sewer districts and municipalities, and county auditors. Owners get a clearer, shorter reimbursement window and a path to preserve it during government-imposed delays, but face new administrative steps and the real risk of losing reimbursement if they miss biennial notices. Local governments gain firmer authority to record contracts, collect latecomer fees, and deposit unclaimed reimbursements, and they have limited liability for failing to collect fees unless the failure was willful; however, some implementation details and the exact dollar limits that municipalities may recover are not included in the provided text, so those practical limits remain unclear.