The bill creates a new Legislative Office on Indian Affairs as a chapter in Title 44 RCW. The office is established to provide educational and informational resources to the legislature, to support the centennial accord and the millennium agreement, and to complement (not replace) the governor’s Office of Indian Affairs. The secretary of the senate and the chief clerk of the house, in consultation with specified committees, must employ a director who serves at their pleasure and whose salary they set. The director is the executive and administrative head, may hire staff under an adopted personnel plan, fix compensation, contract for equipment, services, and consultants, sign vouchers for office expenses, and must provide training, assistance locating resources, and subject-matter expertise. The office must coordinate with the statute law committee to include best practices for drafting policy relating to tribes, and the office’s annual training is mandatory for professional legislative staff of the senate, house, and the office of the code reviser; legislators and nonprofessional staff are encouraged to attend. The act also amends and reenacts multiple existing statutes to add the new office to lists of legislative agencies and to the legislative branch, and to bring the office under certain operational and oversight provisions of the senate facilities and operations committee and the house executive rules committee. It amends RCW 44.90.020 to revise and add definitions (including “collective bargaining,” “commission,” “confidential employee,” “director,” and “employee”), clarifies which categories of workers are included or excluded for chapter purposes, and names affected legislative entities such as the legislative service center (in language that replaces reference to the joint legislative systems committee). Casual employees, interns, pages, and certain work-group employees are explicitly excluded from the chapter’s definition of “employee.” Legally, this is a new administrative-office statute combined with procedural changes (mandatory training, oversight inclusion, voucher/payment authority) and amendments to labor-relations and organizational definitions. Sections 1–7 form the new chapter; sections 5 and 6 take effect July 1, 2027; the “commission” definition references a change after December 31, 2027. The provided extracts are incomplete: the amended RCW 44.90.020 employee subsection continues beyond the material shown, the full text and subject matter of sections 5 and 6 are not included here, and the text does not make clear whether the insertion of “legislative service center” is a renaming, reorganization, or a technical edit.

If enacted, the law would create a new legislative office focused on Indian affairs that provides education, training, and informational resources to lawmakers and their professional staff. That office’s director, hired by the secretary of the senate and the chief clerk of the house, would be able to hire staff, use consultants, enter contracts, and spend money from appropriations or transfers of existing legislative expense budgets; annual training from the office would be mandatory for professional legislative staff in the senate, house, and the office of the code reviser, and directors of those work groups must ensure staff attend. Most affected are professional legislative staff (who must take the training), the secretary of the senate and chief clerk (who gain hiring and salary-setting authority and new administrative responsibilities), and legislative budget managers (who may need to transfer funds and authorize vouchers signed by the new director). The office does not replace the governor’s office of Indian affairs but may communicate with intertribal organizations to stay informed. Key details are missing here, including the full text of some employee-definition changes, the exact effective date for most provisions, the substance of Sections 5 and 6 (which do take effect July 1, 2027), and any specific appropriation amounts, so the total staffing and fiscal impact is unclear.