Senate Bill 5172 amends RCW 52.30.040 to allow a fire protection district that has a fully‑paid fire department to establish a civil service system by resolution of its board of fire commissioners, giving that system the same powers and effect as civil service under chapter 41.08 RCW for cities, towns, and municipalities. The amendment also includes a restriction preventing discharge of an employee solely because the employee resides outside the district. The bill creates a procedure for dissolving such a civil service system: the board of fire commissioners must adopt a resolution to dissolve, and a majority of the civil service employees employed by the district must vote to dissolve within 60 calendar days after the board’s resolution. This is a modification of existing law that adds a new procedural mechanism and employee protection for fire protection districts: it authorizes adoption of civil service, establishes a dissolution procedure with a time limit, and ties substantive operation to chapter 41.08 RCW. The text provided does not include definitions (for example, “fully‑paid fire department,” “civil service,” or “civil service employees”) or other procedural details that may appear in chapter 41.08 RCW, nor does it state whether any additional filing, notice, or approval steps are required beyond the board resolution and employee vote.

If enacted, fire protection districts that employ fully paid firefighters would be able to opt into the same civil service system used by cities, which in practice would give firefighters stronger employment protections (for example, an explicit protection against being fired for living outside the district) and would change how hiring, discipline, promotions, and removals are handled. A district could only end that civil service system if the commissioners vote to dissolve and a majority of the civil service employees vote to approve dissolution within 60 days, so employees would have a direct say in whether the protections remain. The people most affected are the districts’ boards of commissioners and the firefighters they employ: boards gain a new governance option but likely face more formal personnel procedures and potentially greater administrative or legal costs to implement and follow civil service rules, while firefighters gain increased job security and influence over dissolution. The bill text relies on chapter 41.08 RCW for definitions and procedures, so specific voting rules, notice, filing requirements, and the exact scope of added costs or duties are not clear from the extracted material.