This bill creates the "strengthen Washington homes program," a new Title 48 chapter that authorizes financial grants to real property owners, building contractors, nonprofit organizations, and governmental entities to mitigate wildfire risk for insurable dwellings that meet "wildfire prepared" standards. It creates a strengthen Washington homes program account in the state treasury, makes grants contingent on obtaining required local permits/inspections and a wildfire prepared or equivalent designation from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (or successor), and assigns administration and rulemaking authority to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, including authority to run pilot projects and accept gifts. The bill adds a new prohibition in chapter 48.30 RCW preventing insurers from using wildfire risk as a disqualifying factor for property insurance eligibility when a dwelling or neighborhood has a current wildfire prepared designation. It also amends RCW 48.02.190 to specify that the annual cost of operating the Insurance Commissioner’s office and the new program are determined by legislative appropriation and to set procedures and deadlines for calculating, billing, and collecting regulatory and insurance fraud surcharges. The measure creates an insurance commissioner's regulatory account and an insurance commissioner's fraud account, requires fraud surcharge receipts to be deposited to the fraud account, and allows unexpended funds in those accounts to be carried forward and used to fund the strengthen Washington homes program account or to reduce future surcharges. It permits insurers to recoup surcharges previously remitted by charging a separately stated uniform policyholder surcharge (not treated as premium), with rules for multi‑year recoupment and an insurer option to elect not to collect from insureds while still remitting the surcharges. The bill reenacts and amends RCW 43.84.092 to establish a treasury income account that receives earnings on invested surplus treasury balances, directs monthly distributions and proportionate earnings allocations to a long list of state accounts (including the strengthen Washington homes program account) based on average daily balances, and authorizes use of the account to implement federal Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) obligations and to pay purchased banking services before distributions without appropriation. Several textual elements are incomplete or unclear in the provided extracts: the deposit destination in a portion of the amended RCW 48.02.190 is cut off; the full text creating the program account (section 4) is not included here; any procedures for determining "equivalent designation" are not specified; a possible typographical inconsistency ("wildfire prepared neighbors") is not resolved; and the lists of accounts receiving treasury earnings appear truncated.

If enacted, the bill would make it easier for homeowners and nonprofits to get state grants to pay for wildfire-hardening work and would bar insurers from refusing to insure a property solely because of wildfire risk if the property has a recognized “wildfire prepared” designation. That creates a clear incentive for owners to secure permits, meet the insurance institute’s designation standards, and do retrofits — but actual grant payments depend on future legislative appropriations, and the program’s reach will depend on how much money the legislature provides and how “equivalent designation” is interpreted, which the bill does not fully specify. The Office of the Insurance Commissioner would take on new administrative duties (running the program, pilot projects, rulemaking, and billing surcharges), and insurers and policyholders would see changes to how regulatory and fraud surcharges are collected and recovered: insurers must remit surcharges into new commissioner accounts but may recover those amounts from policyholders as a separately stated surcharge on premiums, which could raise consumers’ bills unless insurers choose not to collect and absorb the cost. A new treasury income account shifts how investment earnings are distributed monthly (including to the strengthen Washington homes account), and several sections have expirations or take effect on dates tied to another statute (RCW 74.76.040), so timing and funding availability remain uncertain.