House Bill 2223 amends RCW 42.23.030 and adds a new findings section. The findings say current law has sometimes prevented qualified people in rural areas from serving as irrigation district directors and that the intent is to clarify the law to protect against conflicts while recognizing rural challenges. The bill reproduces and modifies the statute that prohibits municipal officers from being beneficially interested, directly or indirectly, in contracts under their supervision, and from accepting related compensation or gratuities. The bill makes procedural and definitional changes and lists specific exceptions to the general ban. It requires municipal officers to disclose any beneficial interest to their governing body and have the disclosure entered in official minutes or records before a contract is formed, and it bars an interested officer from voting on authorization, approval, or ratification of the contract. It keeps or creates numbered exceptions for certain transactions (for example, municipal utility services at public rates, designation of public depositaries, publication of legal notices, some school district and spouse-employment situations) and sets monetary thresholds and limits for exceptions: generally no more than $3,000 in receipts in any calendar month; certain local officers may exceed $3,000 per month but not $36,000 per year; officers of a rural public hospital district may exceed $1,500 per month but not $24,000 per year, with the annual rural public hospital district limit adjusted yearly by the change in the consumer price index. The bill limits an unskilled day labor exception to wages not exceeding $1,000 per month except in specified larger jurisdictions and where an irrigation district exceeds 50,000 acres or in first-class school districts the exception does not apply. For port district leases to interested officers, a board of three disinterested appraisers (appointed from members of the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers by the presiding judge) and the superior court must find the lease terms fair and in the public interest. The bill defines the consumer price index for these purposes as the Washington state index compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with a rule for choosing among multiple state indexes. Affected parties named in the bill include irrigation district directors, municipal officers, counties and cities, various kinds of school districts, rural public hospital districts, public hospital district commissioners, port districts, and county fair boards; the superior court and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are referenced for specific procedures. The bill was prefiled 12/31/25 and read for the first time 01/12/26. The provided text does not show how the amended RCW differs from the prior statute in detail, nor does it include the full text of the other RCWs it references, so those differences and cross-reference details are not determinable from these facts alone.

If enacted, the bill will tighten and clarify who can have financial interests in contracts with local governments while explicitly trying to avoid excluding qualified people in rural areas. Irrigation district directors and other municipal officers will need to disclose any beneficial interest before a contract is made, be recorded in meeting minutes, and must not vote on contracts in which they are interested. The law sets monthly and annual dollar limits on how much an officer or their business can receive from such contracts (with lower caps and CPI-based annual increases for rural public hospital district officers), limits small day-labor payments, and adds special procedural protections for things like port district leases that will require independent appraisals and court review when an interested officer is involved. Practically, affected local governments and officers should expect more paperwork, public record-keeping, and procedural steps that could slow some contracting and add appraisal or court costs for contested leases. Rural districts may have more flexibility to retain local people as directors under the bill’s stated intent, but the exact changes compared to current law aren’t shown here, and several cross-referenced definitions and prior provisions from other statutes are not included in the extracted text.