This bill amends RCW 36.70A.070 and revises required comprehensive plan elements for counties and cities planning under the Growth Management Act. It modifies existing law by specifying detailed content and procedural requirements for land use, housing, capital facilities, utilities, rural, transportation, economic development, parks, and a new climate change and resiliency element. The housing element changes require inventory and analysis of existing and projected needs (using Department of Commerce growth figures), antidisplacement policies, identification of land capacity for different housing types, and mandatory provisions to preserve, improve, and develop housing including moderate-density options; the bill also directs linkage of local and county housing goals. The climate change and resiliency element is split into mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reduction and resiliency subelements for specified jurisdictions, with requirements to reduce per capita VMT and prioritize benefits to overburdened communities; jurisdictions may not meet those requirements by restricting population growth. The bill makes procedural changes to planning and implementation: it requires public participation in plan adoption or amendment, a minimum “good faith effort” standard for collecting capital facilities and utility data from other public entities (consult plans and email/call staff), a six-year financing plan for capital facilities with reassessment of land use if probable funding falls short, and detailed transportation concurrency and planning rules including a six-year concurrency finance commitment and permitted mitigation through active transportation and other demand-management strategies. It authorizes counties to set increased residential densities in certain rural limited areas (at least four units per lot, or six units per lot if at least two are affordable), limits the size of retail/food service in mixed-use rural areas, requires confirmation from public providers that capacity exists before new development, and directs counties to contain and set boundaries for existing more intensive rural development; the text for the remainder of the limited areas of more intensive rural development provisions is cut off in the provided material. The bill also changes appeal and compliance procedures: adoption of many implementing ordinances, plan amendments, and development regulation changes are not subject to administrative or judicial appeal under chapter 43.21C RCW in specified circumstances (with an exception where an action has a probable significant adverse impact on fish habitat), and failure to obtain information from other public entities after the defined good faith effort cannot be used as a ground for noncompliance or invalidity under chapter 228, Laws of 2023. It includes rules for adopting or adopting by reference natural hazard mitigation plans and a department-administered extension process with specific eligibility dates; the identity of “the department” referenced in those extension and guideline provisions is not specified in the extracted text. The provided excerpts are incomplete in places: the document begins and ends mid‑subsection in several places, the full rules for “limited areas of more intensive rural development” are not fully visible, some cross-referenced subsections and definitions (including the department’s identity and full definitions of terms like “rural character”) are missing, and no changes to criminal penalties are described in the available material.

If enacted, counties and cities that plan under the Growth Management Act will need to do more detailed and targeted planning: expanded housing inventories that show needs for very lowand extremely low-income units and emergency or supportive housing, antidisplacement policies, wildfire-risk land use measures, groundwater protection, climate mitigation and resiliency planning, six-year capital financing plans (including green infrastructure), and utilities inventories. That will increase local planning workloads and coordination needs, require getting capacity confirmations from providers before permitting certain rural mixed-use development, and could force jurisdictions to reassess land use if identified capital funding is unlikely to materialize. The people and organizations most affected are county and city planning departments, public entities that own utilities and capital facilities (which must respond to information requests), rural residents and businesses, and developers. Local governments will likely face higher planning and coordination costs and new procedural responsibilities, but cities that adopt nonproject measures that increase housing capacity, affordability, or reduce displacement outside critical areas will have reduced exposure to administrative or judicial appeals under the state environmental review law unless fish habitat impacts are probable. The bill excerpt is incomplete about some rules for “limited areas of more intensive rural development,” so details and effects for those specific areas are unclear.