This bill amends existing scrap metal statutes (RCW 19.290.020, .030, .050, and .060) and adds a new section to chapter 43.10 RCW establishing a “critical infrastructure crime reduction unit” in the Office of the Attorney General that will operate when funded. The amendments impose detailed procedural and recordkeeping requirements on scrap metal businesses: a standardized, legible transaction record and a seller declaration that the property is not, to the seller’s knowledge, stolen must be signed by the seller and witnessed by an employee before a transaction is consummated; required record fields are listed (including seller and employee names, ID, vehicle and property descriptions, photographs, time, date, location, and value); records must be retained five years and be open to inspection by commissioned law enforcement; transactions of nonferrous metal valued at $50 or more must be digitally uploaded to a Washington State Patrol–approved database and the property retained in original form for at least 10 days; multiple transactions involving the same seller or delivery vehicle within 24 hours are aggregated as one transaction; cash is defined and prohibited as payment; ID and documentation rules for commercial metal and burned wire are imposed; beer kegs may be purchased only from manufacturers or licensed breweries; purchased property subject to probable cause of being stolen is subject to seizure and forfeiture; and businesses must furnish transcripts of records to the Washington State Patrol and report suspected stolen goods. The new unit in the Attorney General’s office is directed, when funded, to assist local law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys on request, convene a work group to identify trends and best practices, and conduct related training; it must prioritize jurisdictions with higher rates of metal theft or vandalism affecting critical infrastructure. The act also creates a Critical Infrastructure Crime Reduction Account in the State Treasurer’s custody to receive legislative appropriations, donations, grants, and federal or private funds; only the attorney general or a designee may authorize expenditures from that account, expenditures must be used only to fund the unit, and the account is subject to allotment procedures under chapter 43.88 RCW without requiring a separate appropriation to expend funds. The statute preserves the attorney general’s concurrent investigative and prosecutorial authority. These are regulatory and procedural changes (recordkeeping, inspection, reporting, payment and retention procedures, seizure/forfeiture procedure), the creation of a new unit and a dedicated funding account; the bill does not, in the provided text, create a new crime charge or expressly change criminal penalties beyond authorizing seizure and forfeiture where probable cause exists. Several details are incomplete or ambiguous in the provided extracts: the text of the unit’s full duties (section 5) is missing, some payment-capture and immediate payment provisions appear unclear or struck-through, the timing requirement for transmitting records to the Washington State Patrol is described ambiguously as “not less than five business days,” and no appropriation, funding amount, or effective date is included.

Scrap metal recyclers will face much stricter front-line obligations: they must collect a signed, witnessed declaration and detailed contact, ID, vehicle, item descriptions and photographs for each nonferrous metal purchase, keep those records five years, refuse cash payments, and for purchases of $50 or more upload information to a Washington State Patrol–approved system and hold the metal in original form for at least ten days. Those rules also bar purchases without government photo ID, limit buying commercial metal or burned wire without documentation, require businesses to provide records to the state patrol on request, and expose purchased items to seizure if law enforcement has probable cause; this will increase administrative work, storage and cash-flow impacts from delayed disposition, and exposure to law-enforcement holds, while giving businesses an exemption from public records disclosure for those records. Some operational details remain unclear in the text provided, including exact timing for record transmission, certain payment-capture requirements, and how aggregation or payment exceptions are applied. The attorney general’s office would get a new “critical infrastructure crime reduction” unit once money is provided, with a dedicated state account to receive appropriations, donations, grants, and federal or private funds; the unit would prioritize jurisdictions with higher rates of metal-theft or vandalism affecting critical infrastructure, and only the attorney general or a designee may authorize spending from that account. The account is subject to allotment rules but can be spent without a separate appropriation, and the attorney general keeps concurrent investigative and prosecutorial authority; however, the unit’s full duties, staffing, funding level, and timing are not included in the material provided.