This bill creates a new temporary legislative agency, the Washington department of government efficiency (WADOGE), and adds it to several existing statutory lists of legislative agencies. It establishes a four-member legislative board (two senators and two representatives, with majority and minority caucus representation) appointed by the senate president and house speaker, directs the board to appoint a director (removable only by unanimous board consent for neglect of duty or misconduct), and authorizes the director and board to manage the department, receive appropriations, and report quarterly and by specified deadlines to the joint legislative audit and review committee (JLARC). The act reenacts and amends multiple RCWs to include WADOGE and adds new sections to chapter 34.05 RCW and a new chapter in Title 43 RCW. The bill makes several procedural and substantive changes to agency rulemaking and operations. It requires each state agency to create a WADOGE team and complete a review of enabling statutes and rules by March 31, 2026, to report obsolete or unnecessary laws and to provide WADOGE broad access to nonconfidential records (with those records excluded from public disclosure under chapter 42.56 RCW). For any new rule, agencies must identify and repeal at least two existing rules and, to the extent allowed by law, offset any new incremental costs by eliminating costs from the repealed rules; agencies must send rule proposals to WADOGE for comment except where a rule is specifically required by statute. The bill also requires economic analyses for proposed rules expected to impose at least $1,000,000 in cumulative five-year costs and directs agencies to adopt specified measures to reduce impacts on small businesses and to choose less-costly alternatives when they meet statutory objectives. The act directs significant operational changes and reviews: agencies must end remote work arrangements and return employees to in-person full-time duty stations subject to limited exemptions; agencies must perform quarterly regulatory analyses and report to WADOGE; WADOGE must review permitting, adjudicatory processes, policy language (including review of use of concepts such as “social cost of carbon”), and agency enforcement actions for potential constitutional conflicts, and include findings in a final report to JLARC. The bill creates a WADOGE suspense account funded by depositing six percent of general operating fund allocations for agencies beginning July 1 of the 2025–2027 biennium and every biennium thereafter, with those funds released to an agency when it completes its WADOGE review and WADOGE files its final report. The act appropriates $750,000 (or as much as necessary) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027, takes effect immediately, and expires July 4, 2028. Some material is missing from the extracted text: the full text and deadlines of section 2 (the required final report to JLARC), the complete new chapter and new section language added to Title 43 and chapter 34.05 RCW, and portions of certain definitions (for example, the complete definition of “confidential employee” and some earlier definition subsections). Those omissions mean the summary cannot state additional duties, limits, or procedural details that may appear in the missing sections.

If enacted, the bill creates a new legislative agency, the Washington department of government efficiency (WADOGE), that will require every state agency to stand up a four-person review team, complete a review of their enabling statutes and rules by March 31, 2026, perform regular quarterly regulatory analyses, and send rule proposals to WADOGE for comment. Agencies seeking to adopt any new rule will generally have to identify and repeal at least two existing rules and show cost offsets, prepare a detailed economic analysis for rules expected to cost $1,000,000 or more over five years, and follow WADOGE guidance on permitting, greenhouse gas valuation, and rule language; WADOGE will report recommendations to JLARC with a final report due by July 4, 2028 and the act itself expires on that date. The most affected parties are state agencies (especially those that issue permits or enforce rules such as Ecology, DNR, Commerce, Agriculture, and Fish and Wildlife), which will face new staffing and reporting duties, likely upfront costs to do analyses and rule rewriting, and a financial risk because the treasurer will withhold six percent of each agency’s biennial general operating allocations into a suspense account until an agency completes its WADOGE review and WADOGE issues its final report; the act provides an initial appropriation to WADOGE of $750,000 for the 2027 fiscal year. Important implementation details are missing from the provided text—notably the full contents of section 2 that defines the final report and some definitions and enforcement mechanics—so the scope of WADOGE’s authorities and how the holdback and review requirements will be applied in practice are unclear.