House Bill 1695 (H-0476.1) amends existing Washington Growth Management Act provisions, principally RCW 36.70A.070 (and indicates an amendment to RCW 36.70A.110 although that text is not provided). It modifies and expands what counties and cities must include in their comprehensive plans by adding or clarifying required elements, specific content requirements for those elements, procedural standards for plan adoption and information gathering, and limits on certain appeals. Substantive changes include expanded land use element requirements (land use designations, densities/intensities, groundwater protection for public supplies, environmental justice considerations, measures to reduce per-capita vehicle miles traveled without shifting greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in the state, drainage/flooding/stormwater review where applicable, and wildfire risk reduction standards). The housing element must now inventory and analyze existing and projected housing needs across income bands (including emergency housing and extremely low-income needs), identify local policies with racially disparate impacts, map areas at higher risk of displacement, and establish antidisplacement policies; jurisdictions revising housing elements must consider prior review reports and identified reasonable measures. The bill also prescribes capital facilities, utilities, rural, transportation, economic development, parks/recreation, and a climate change and resiliency element (with separate greenhouse gas reduction and resiliency subelements), and it sets specific transportation requirements including multimodal level of service standards, concurrency rules that allow development only if required improvements or strategies are concurrent, a six-year financing commitment standard, and ADA transition planning. It limits appeals under chapter 43.21C RCW for city ordinances and nonproject actions that increase housing capacity, affordability, and mitigate displacement (when applied outside critical areas) unless there is a probable significant adverse impact on fish habitat. The bill also defines a minimum "good faith effort" for obtaining capital facilities or utility information from other public entities and states that failure to obtain information after such an effort is not grounds for noncompliance under chapter 228, Laws of 2023. These are amendments to existing law and procedural rules rather than creation of new crimes or penalty changes. The changes are a mixture of substantive planning requirements (new or expanded plan elements and content), procedural changes (appeal limitations, good faith information-gathering requirements, concurrency timing), and coordination requirements among jurisdictions and agencies. Several excerpts are incomplete or cut off in the provided text (including parts of subsection (5)(d)(i), the full amendment to RCW 36.70A.110, and other incomplete subsections), and some references (for example the specific "department" responsible for certain guidelines and extensions) are not identified in the extracts, so the summary may omit provisions present in parts of the bill not included here.

If enacted, local governments will have to produce much more detailed comprehensive plans and supporting finance analyses, adding requirements like housing inventories by income level, antidisplacement policies, wildfire and climate resiliency measures that prioritize overburdened communities, multimodal transportation standards with concurrency rules, and six‑year capital financing plans. That will raise planning workloads and likely increase upfront costs for counties, cities, and special districts to collect data, coordinate with the Department of Commerce, DOT, utilities, and tribes, and to demonstrate funding or mitigation before new development is allowed; jurisdictions may also need to reassess land use choices if identified funding is insufficient. The bill also changes developer and agency responsibilities: providers of public facilities must confirm capacity for some rural-area projects, developers can proceed when impacts are mitigated through specified concurrent strategies (active transportation, transit, demand management), and certain city actions that increase housing capacity outside critical areas are shielded from SEPA appeals unless they likely harm fish habitat, reducing litigation risk for those decisions. Key details are missing from the provided text (portions of RCW 36.70A.110 and some rural density and implementation specifics are cut off), so exact thresholds, timing, and enforcement mechanics remain unclear.