Substitute House Bill 2406 (69th Legislature, 2026) primarily modernizes how the Department of Labor and Industries and related agencies send official notices by amending many existing RCW sections. The bill replaces some prior mail-only service requirements with options for tracked electronic or other methods that allow delivery confirmation, and requires that before the department uses an electronic method for the first time it must offer the recipient the option to receive nonelectronic communications. The bill reenacts and amends provisions including RCW 49.48.060 and amends multiple chapters governing contractor registration, plumbing and electrical licensing, workplace enforcement, wages, minors at work, asbestos certification, workers’ compensation, conveyances, and related appeal and collection procedures. Substantive changes are procedural and administrative in nature and include: updated definitions and service rules for contractor registration; requirements to notify contractors immediately upon suspension (including automatic suspension following certain DSHS certifications); revised notice, hearing, and appeal procedures for revocation or suspension of plumbing, electrical, asbestos, conveyance, and other licenses; standardized use of trackable/confirmable delivery for citations, notices of infraction, and penalty notices; and preserved appeal timelines and fees (including administrative hearing procedures, certified check amounts for certain appeals, and stays of enforcement pending appeal in many contexts). The bill also sets or restates civil penalty ranges and scales in multiple places (for example, penalties for wage coercion, willful wage payment violations, penalties related to minor work permit violations and serious harm to minors, and repeat violator enhancements), establishes timelines for investigations and redeterminations, requires certain reporting and recordkeeping, and provides rules for arbitration appointment and finality in specified municipal disputes. The bill text provided here is incomplete in places. Several listed RCW amendments appear only partially or are cut off (for example, RCW 18.106.100(3) and parts of other sections), and many header-listed sections are not fully reproduced in the extracted facts. Where the text is incomplete or context is missing, that uncertainty is noted and no additional provisions are assumed.

If enacted, the bill lets the Department of Labor and Industries and related licensing programs send many official notices, suspensions, revocations, citations, and penalty assessments by a trackable electronic method instead of only by mail, but recipients must be offered the option to receive nonelectronic communications before the department uses electronic delivery for the first time. In practice this will speed notice delivery and start many deadlines (for example suspension notices, revocation timing, appeal filing windows, and final-order timelines) based on the date of electronic transmission; contractors, plumbers, electricians, employers, license holders, and employees will therefore face faster enforcement timelines and should expect the same appeal and penalty rules to apply to electronically sent notices (including required appeal fees or certified checks, stays of penalties while appeals proceed, and deposit of collected civil penalties into the supplemental pension fund). The changes most affect the Department of Labor and Industries (by expanding allowed communication methods and creating new procedural obligations), regulated businesses and license holders (who must accept or opt out of electronic delivery, respond within the same statutory deadlines, and comply with added duties such as bond or panic‑button and reporting requirements where specified), and employees/complainants (who may receive faster notice of enforcement actions and remedies). Several provisions in the extracted text are incomplete or truncated and the bill does not fully define how "trackable" electronic delivery must work or spell out all edits listed in the header, so some implementation details and the full scope of amendments remain uncertain.