House Bill 2408 (69th Legislature, 2026), introduced at the request of the Office of Financial Management and read 01/13/26, repeals several specified RCWs and amends existing law, principally RCW 41.04.665, to revise the state shared leave program and related personnel provisions. The bill updates qualifying reasons an agency head may allow an employee to receive shared leave (including serious employee or family illness, military service, certain veteran-related medical needs, volunteering for declared humanitarian emergencies, victims of domestic violence/sexual assault/stalking, parental leave, and pregnancy-related temporary disability), requires that shared leave be justified and follow agency sick or military leave rules, and sets a standard cap of 522 days of shared leave with a limited exception for extraordinary circumstances. It also caps shared-leave income for employees receiving industrial insurance wage replacement at no more than 25 percent of base salary, requires veterans and spouses be able to access the veterans’ in-state service shared leave pool upon employment, and defines donor minimum balances and accounting rules for transferring annual leave, sick leave, and personal holidays between employees and agencies, including procedures for returning unused transferred leave. The bill authorizes the director of financial management to adopt rules to implement certain provisions, defines “shortly deplete” as 40 hours or less of applicable leave, and adds supported employment direction: DSHS and OFM shall identify agencies suitable for supported employment, agencies may participate only within existing budgets, must designate a coordinator, and must submit annual updates to DSHS and the office of equity. The director may also adopt separate personnel rules for managers (excluding higher education managers and exempt positions) governing recruitment, classification, compensation, discipline, and related practices; those manager rules take precedence where applicable. The bill includes provisions clarifying how statutory salary-fixing for appointive officers may be adjusted and directs that certain salaries be paid monthly and generally conform to OFM recommendations. The text provided is incomplete: subsection (11) of RCW 41.04.665 is cut off, the amended texts for RCW 41.04.760, 41.06.500, 43.03.030, and 43.03.040 are not included, and the full content of the repealed RCWs is not shown. Some parenthetical or historical text appears in the excerpts and it is unclear from the provided material whether those parentheticals are being retained, removed, or modified.

If enacted, the measure makes shared leave rules more specific and expands who can receive donated leave while setting clear limits that reduce open-ended agency cost exposure: employees may receive donated leave for a range of reasons (illness, military service, veterans’ medical care, disaster volunteering, domestic violence, parental and pregnancy-related leave) only if they have depleted or will shortly deplete their own leave (defined as 40 hours or less kept in reserve). A recipient’s total standard shared leave is capped at 522 days (with a narrow supervisor exception for some severe cases) and those on industrial insurance wage replacement can get no more than 25% of base salary from shared leave. Veterans and their spouses must be allowed to use the veterans’ in‑state service shared leave pool upon hire. Donors must keep minimum balances when giving leave (at least 10 days annual leave, 176 hours sick leave, or 22 days for certain education employees), transferred leave does not count toward FTE allocations, and agencies must return unused leave value to donors under specified conditions. Practically, state agencies will face more administrative responsibilities and some budgetary impacts: agencies must approve transfers, make salary payments for employees on transferred leave, handle interagency fund and credit transfers, and be prepared to return leave value when it is no longer needed; OFM gains rulemaking authority to implement these provisions and to resolve transfer or appropriation questions. The bill also encourages supported employment placements without new funding—agencies may only participate within existing budgets and must designate coordinators and submit annual reports to DSHS and the office of equity—so agencies choosing to participate will absorb any program cost and reporting burden. Important details are missing from the provided text (some subsections and the exact text of other amended sections and repealed RCWs), so the full scope of procedural and fiscal impacts cannot be determined from these excerpts alone.