This bill amends existing law (RCW 43.388.010) to designate the Washington state leadership board as a trustee for the state and to set out the board’s purposes, governance, programs, and fiscal rules. It identifies the board’s purpose as extending recognition for outstanding state service and expanding educational, sports, leadership, and employment opportunities by administering specified programs, including the Washington world fellows (described as a college readiness and study abroad fellowship), Boundless Washington, and Compassion Scholars. Governance changes include a board of directors that lists the governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state as ex officio nonvoting members, authority to appoint additional officers and members, the option to include four legislators as ex officio members (appointed by legislative leaders), a requirement that the board appoint an executive director with the lieutenant governor’s consent, and a removal procedure by the lieutenant governor for cause if a majority of the board votes for removal. The board must adopt bylaws and governance and transparency policies. The bill creates procedural and fiscal changes: it authorizes the board to solicit and receive gifts, grants, and endowments from public or private sources and to expend those funds consistent with donors’ terms and the chapter’s purposes; it requires the board to post on its website detailed information on all funds received and expenditures. The executive director must report funds received from private sources to the Office of Financial Management on a “regular basis” (frequency not specified). Private funds are prohibited from reducing or substituting for the board’s legislatively appropriated budget and must instead be applied to board-authorized projects, programs, and functions that were not funded by the legislature. The lieutenant governor’s office is permitted to provide facilities and administrative support when the board’s work aligns with that office’s mission, including collaboration on the Washington world fellows program and compilation of a yearly financial report; the bill requires a yearly financial report for the Washington world fellows program to be compiled and made available to the appropriate legislative committees by January 15 each year. The legislature may also appropriate funds to support the board, subject to availability. This is a modification of existing statute rather than creation of an entirely new chapter. The extracted text shows deletions (including struck-through references to a sports mentoring program) and refers repeatedly to “this chapter,” but the full chapter context and any prior provisions are not provided in these facts. The required frequency for reporting private funds to the Office of Financial Management is described only as “on a regular basis” and is not specified here, and the relationship between Boundless Washington and any prior sports mentoring program is unclear from the provided text.

If enacted, the board will be able to run and expand programs like the Washington world fellows, Boundless Washington, and Compassion scholars by raising private gifts and grants, but those private dollars must be used on new or additional board-authorized activities and cannot be used to reduce what the legislature already funds. The board will have to make financial activity public—posting detailed receipts and expenditures online, filing an annual January 15 financial report on the Washington world fellows program to legislative committees, and reporting private donations to the Office of Financial Management on a regular (but unspecified) schedule—so donors, lawmakers, and the public will see how outside funds are spent. The lieutenant governor’s office gains a clearer role: it can provide facilities and administrative support and must consent to the board’s executive director appointment (and can remove that director for cause if the board votes), while four legislators and state officers become ex officio board members. Practically, that shifts more operational oversight to the lieutenant governor and increases administrative work and modest costs for the board and the lieutenant governor’s office to handle reporting, website disclosures, and collaboration. It is unclear from the provided text how often OFM reports must be filed and whether any prior sports mentoring program language was intended to be replaced by Boundless Washington.