Substitute Senate Bill 5301 (69th Legislature, 2025) amends RCW 36.70A.110 and related law and adds a new section to chapter 36.70A RCW. The bill clarifies that a city and a federally recognized Indian tribe may mutually agree to contract for extension of urban governmental services beyond a city's urban growth area (UGA) to tribal land with urban development, and it sets a deadline of December 31, 2028 for a tribe and a city that abut each other to enter such an agreement. The bill makes statutory changes to UGA designation and revision procedures: it retains and restates criteria for revising UGAs (including no net increase in acreage or development capacity, exclusions for designated resource lands, protection of critical areas and aquifer recharge areas, contiguity requirements, and required identification and funding of needed transportation and public facilities), requires meaningful consultation and specified notification with potentially affected tribes and mediation if no agreement is reached, and prohibits expanding UGAs into specified 100‑year floodplains west of the Cascade crest with enumerated exceptions. It also restricts permissible land uses in those floodplain exception areas to certain nonresidential or environmental uses, and specifies conditions under which properties need not be served by new sanitary sewer installations (for example, functioning nonpolluting on‑site systems or density limits due to environmental hazards). The act is a statutory and procedural change to growth management planning and intergovernmental contracting authority, not a change to criminal penalties. The bill references multiple existing authorities and agencies (Office of Financial Management population projections, Department of Ecology for river mean annual flows, Growth Management Hearings Board appeals, SEPA, and countywide planning policy requirements). The provided extracts are incomplete: the text referring to an added section and "section 3 of this act" is not included, some floodplain exception language is cut off, the specific department named for dispute resolution is not identified in the extracts, the term "urban governmental services" is not defined in the provided text, and the start/end dates for the referenced twenty‑year planning period are not given.

If enacted, the bill gives cities and federally recognized tribes a clear, time-limited option (through December 31, 2028) to mutually agree that a city will provide urban governmental services to tribal land that directly abuts city limits even when that land lies outside the city’s official urban growth area. That creates a new practical pathway for tribes to receive city-level services (like sewer, roads, stormwater, or other urban infrastructure) without changing county UGA boundaries, and it means cities that sign such agreements will likely take on new capital and operating costs and maintenance responsibilities; tribes gain an option to access municipal services but will need to negotiate funding, service levels, and any tradeoffs. Counties remain responsible for UGA designations and must meaningfully consult tribes and use mediation if agreements cannot be reached, so counties’ planning timelines and dispute-resolution duties will still shape how and whether these service agreements move forward. The bill also keeps and clarifies limits on expanding urban growth areas into certain large floodplains, allows only narrow types of uses in those floodplain situations, and preserves exemptions so some properties need not be connected to sewer even when a sewer plan exists. Practically, that will constrain where new UGA-driven development can occur, limit municipal obligations to force sewer installation on certain properties, and could shift costs or reduce development options for landowners and local governments depending on negotiations. Important details are missing from the provided text — the new section language, the formal definition of “urban governmental services,” the full floodplain exception language, which department handles dispute resolution, and the exact twenty-year planning period — so the precise financial impacts and administrative steps for cities, tribes, counties, and utilities remain unclear.