The bill creates a new county local road program and a county local road trust account within the motor vehicle fund by adding a new chapter to Title 36 RCW (sections 1–10). It is a new law, effective July 1, 2025, and includes an emergency clause declaring immediate necessity. Moneys in the trust account must be used for preservation and improvement of county local roads and for the county road administration board’s expenses in administering a county road local access preservation program; the account is subject to state allotment procedures (chapter 43.88 RCW) and requires appropriation for expenditures. The county road administration board must adopt rules for allocating trust funds to counties, set project selection criteria, and include a program status report in its annual legislative report. Eligible projects (which must be included in a county’s six-year program before board approval) include 2-R, 3-R, and reconstruction projects as described in the WSDOT LAG manual, replacement of bridges on the national bridge inventory, removal of human-made impediments to anadromous fish passage, and pedestrian facilities. The board must require joint planning with cities, towns, or WSDOT when projects are adjacent to those entities or will be substantially affected by a state highway project. The board may authorize construction phases in sequence, reserve funds for future years, consider emergent projects, set allocated amounts for approved projects, and may adopt rules allowing later increases; counties receiving funds must provide matching funds as established by board rule after studies. The bill establishes definitions (for example, “board,” “county local road project,” “LAG manual,” “overburdened community,” and “pedestrian facility”) and identifies affected bodies including the county road administration board, counties, cities and towns, WSDOT, federally recognized Indian reservations, and overburdened communities. It also limits eligibility in most cases to counties that in the prior 12 months spent road revenues only for road purposes, with specified exceptions (including provisions affecting counties under 8,000 population), and prohibits allocations to counties identified by the governor under RCW 36.70A.340. The extracted text does not specify the new chapter number in Title 36, definitions of “2-R,” “3-R,” and “reconstruction,” detailed content of the county road local access preservation program, the matching fund formulas, or detailed rulemaking timelines and procedures.

If enacted, the law would create a dedicated pot of state motor vehicle money to pay for preservation and improvement of county local roads and to cover administration of a county road local access preservation program. Counties that follow the rules and include projects in their six-year road program could get state funding for specific project types (local road repairs, certain reconstructions, bridge replacements, removal of fish-passage barriers, and pedestrian facilities), but they will have to provide matching funds set later by the county road administration board and meet eligibility rules that generally bar counties that diverted road revenues in the prior year. The board will write the allocation rules, do project selection using specified criteria, require joint planning with nearby cities or WSDOT where projects touch other jurisdictions, and must report program status to the legislature; funds still require normal allotment and appropriation and the act takes effect July 1, 2025 with an emergency finding. Counties are the primary parties affected: compliant counties stand to receive new state dollars but must absorb the cost and administrative work of meeting board rules, matching funds, and planning requirements; counties that recently used road revenues for other purposes or are identified under existing statutes risk losing access. The county road administration board and WSDOT will take on new coordination and rulemaking duties. Key details that will affect real costs and eligibility in practice—how much counties must match, the precise definitions of allowed project types, and specifics of the local access preservation program—are left for board rules or other references and are not specified in the provided text.