House Bill 1400 amends multiple existing Washington statutes and adds a new section to chapter 81.60 RCW. It primarily changes employment, certification, training, and discipline procedures for peace officers, reserve officers, and corrections officers and clarifies how the Criminal Justice Training Commission (commission) oversees those matters. The bill makes certification (or an exemption) a condition of employment and requires applicants with conditional offers to undergo a comprehensive background investigation before a nonconditional offer is made. Required background elements listed include criminal history checks, national decertification index and commission record reviews, prior employer disciplinary and complaint disclosures, prosecuting authority inquiries, extremist-affiliation and social media review, immigration/citizenship verification, psychological exams and polygraph or similar assessments, and fingerprint submissions routed through the Washington State Patrol to the FBI. Employing agencies must certify in writing to the commission that background checks are complete and may require applicants to pay part of psychological or polygraph testing costs up to actual cost or $400. The bill also updates training requirements and timelines for different classes of officers, makes certification lapse automatically after more than 24 consecutive months out of service (with specified exceptions), allows petition-based reinstatement subject to commission rules, and sets administrative hearing procedures including use of administrative law judges, five-member hearings panels, public access to hearings and records, annual public summaries of dispositions, and judicial review of final decisions. The bill amends RCW 81.60.010–.060 to modernize railroad police commissioning: the commission may commission railroad police officers at a railroad’s request, require completion of commission-approved training paid by the requesting corporation, limit commissioned officers’ powers to protecting corporate property and related arrests, allow the commission to revoke commissions, and make the procuring corporation solely responsible for compensation and civil liability for unlawful acts. A new definition states that “commissioned” means the commission has granted authority under state law to act as a railroad police officer. Some text in the provided extracts is incomplete (for example, a subsection about fingerprint submission ends mid-sentence) and several amended RCW sections are cited but their full amended language is not included here, so details in those sections cannot be verified from these extracts.

If enacted, the bill will make hiring tighter and more administratively burdensome for police and corrections agencies and applicants: employers must complete detailed background investigations (including national fingerprint checks forwarded to the FBI) and certify to the state commission there is no disqualifying information before making a nonconditional offer, applicants can be charged up to $400 for psychological or polygraph testing, and officers who have more than 24 months out of service generally lose certification unless reinstated. The Criminal Justice Training Commission gains clearer authority to set standards, run public hearings, and require training; hearings and decisions will be public and annually summarized online, increasing transparency and reputational exposure for officers and agencies. Railroad companies that seek commissioned railroad police must pay all training costs, take on officer compensation and civil liability, and meet application requirements, shifting direct financial and legal responsibility onto those corporations. Practically, agencies will likely see longer hiring timelines, added verification duties, and potential new training cost or reimbursement obligations, while applicants face more upfront vetting and possible testing fees; officers face higher risk of losing certification after extended breaks in service. Some details that affect how fingerprint checks and other procedures are carried out and how other amended sections operate are missing from the provided excerpts, so the full operational impact on fingerprint processing and certain training or decertification procedures is unclear.