This bill amends RCW 47.85.020 and adds new sections to require "the department" to operate a multiagency permit program that streamlines permitting for covered projects. The program must provide early project coordination, expedited review, status updates, technical and regulatory guidance, construction support, and assistance developing complete biological assessments and permit applications, avoidance/minimization measures, and mitigation input. Once a project is determined to need a specific permit and permit parameters are sufficiently established, program staff must secure a meeting with the issuing agency or agencies within 30 days, begin soliciting community input within 30 days, and, to the maximum extent possible, ensure a permit decision within 90 days of that meeting. The bill establishes new procedural "deemed approval" rules for specified permits: if an issuing agency files no comments within 60 days of submission the permit is deemed approved; if comments are filed and the application is resubmitted, absence of further comments within 30 days results in deemed approval; and staff may deem approval if objective written-standard comments have been addressed and remaining comments are found extraneous or irrelevant. Eligible permit types explicitly listed include hydraulic project approvals (chapter 77.55 RCW), shoreline permits (chapter 90.58 RCW), State Environmental Policy Act permits (chapter 43.21C RCW), and wastewater discharge permits (chapter 90.48 RCW), and the bill requires that issuing-agency comments be based on objective written standards. The bill also requires early and ongoing collaboration and solicitation of input from impacted federally recognized tribes, establishment and maintenance of programmatic agreements and permits to expedite compliance with federal laws (including the Endangered Species Act, section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Clean Water Act), and coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Seattle district), Department of Ecology, and Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop and maintain complete permit application guidance and perform internal quality assurance/quality control before submission. It directs a multiagency effort to streamline environmental permits for Department of Transportation fish passage barrier correction projects and to develop programmatic permit options, and it requires the Department of Transportation to report to the legislative transportation committees by December 1, 2027 (with that reporting requirement expiring December 31, 2027). The act takes effect October 1, 2026. The extracted text does not identify which entity "the department" refers to, omits some intervening subsection numbering, and does not show the prior version of RCW 47.85.020 for comparison.

If enacted, the law will push permit applicants—especially the Department of Transportation and other big infrastructure sponsors—toward faster, more guided permitting by creating a staffed multiagency program that helps prepare complete applications, holds coordination meetings quickly, solicits local and tribal input early, and aims for decisions within tight timeframes. That should reduce project delays and related carrying costs for sponsors and make predictable timelines more likely, but it will also require more upfront work from program staff and from issuing agencies to meet the new meeting and review deadlines. Permitting agencies (Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Army Corps’ Seattle district, and others) will face stronger pressure to respond quickly or risk permits being deemed approved if they don’t comment in the specified windows, so they may need to shift staff or processes toward faster reviews; the law also requires programmatic agreements to streamline compliance with federal laws like the ESA and Clean Water Act. The text leaves unclear which specific “department” runs the program and a few subsection details are missing, so some implementation scope and responsibilities remain uncertain.