Senate Bill 5420, as amended by the House, amends multiple Washington statutes and creates a new section (text of the new section not included in the extracted material). The bill passed the House on March 5, 2026 and the Senate on March 9, 2026 after first reading on January 22, 2025. It primarily revises definitions, veteran and uniformed service employment preferences, reemployment and restoration rights, licensing renewals for people who serve, and retirement and pension credit rules for city employees, police, and firefighters. Substantive changes in the extracted text include expanded and clarified definitions (for example, defining "uniformed services" to expressly include the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the NOAA commissioned officer corps), statutory publicand permissive private-employment preferences for veterans, spouses, and widows/widowers with qualifying discharges, and protections for employees restored after uniformed service (treated as on furlough, restored without loss of seniority, entitled to employer benefit participation under existing furlough/leave rules, and protected from discharge without cause for one year). The bill amends retirement law to allow up to five years of military or uniformed service to be credited toward firefighter and city retirement where specified, sets rules for restoring withdrawn contributions within five years, allows credit in some circumstances when employment is resumed within specified timeframes (including a 10-year rule for certain refusals), permits survivor or incapacitated-member applications for service credit, revises police pension calculations (25-year retirement baseline with 2% increases per additional year up to five years and related caps), preserves license force while serving and requires renewal within six months after qualifying discharge, and modifies competitive-exam veteran scoring (specific percentage additions and limitations as described). Several provisions and sections referenced in the bill text are missing or incomplete in the extracted material: the text of the new section is not provided, RCW 41.40.170 subsection language is incomplete, and many of the listed RCW amendments (including 43.24.130, certain city retirement provisions, and portions of chapter 73.16) are referenced but not fully shown here; the identity of some administrative entities referred to as "the department" or "the director" is not specified in the extracts.

If enacted, the bill will broaden and clarify protections and benefits for people who serve in the uniformed services (explicitly including the Public Health Service and NOAA commissioned corps), making it easier for veterans and certain military spouses to get hiring preference in public jobs (and permissively in private jobs), keep professional licenses active while serving with a streamlined six‑month renewal window after discharge, and strengthen reemployment rights so returning service members get restoration of seniority and access to employer benefits and one year of protection from discharge without cause. Police and fire personnel can receive up to five years of military service credited toward retirement (subject to paying required contributions), and cities may choose among prior service pension calculation rates, which changes how pension obligations are calculated and certified. The groups most affected are service members, veterans, their spouses and survivors, city and county employers, municipal pension funds and the statewide city employees retirement system, and licensing boards. Employers will need to follow expanded restoration and hiring-preference rules and may face modest increased costs or administrative work to restore benefits and honor one‑year job protection; municipal pension funds and cities may see higher retirement liabilities or need third‑party payments where additional prior service credit is granted. Some implementation details and the full fiscal impact are unclear from the provided text because several amended sections and the new section text are not included.