This bill amends RCW 29B.40.020 to revise campaign contribution rules. It imposes per-election contribution caps for most donors of $800 to candidates for legislative, county, city council, mayoral, school board, or public hospital district commissioner in districts over 150,000, and $1,600 for port district offices or state offices other than legislative. It restricts contribution timing for primaries and general elections, allows limited post-primary contributions only to retire debts of candidates who lost the primary, and bars contributions after the final day of the applicable general election cycle. It adds a new provision that no state employee (as defined in RCW 42.52.010) may make aggregate contributions to covered candidates or political committees exceeding $250. It sets parallel limits for recall campaigns, establishes party and caucus committee contribution limits tied to the number of eligible registered voters in a jurisdiction, places annual contribution caps to caucus committees ($800) and bona fide political parties ($4,000) from non-individual entities, limits certain out-of-state corporations, small unions, and inactive political committees from making reportable contributions, bars acceptance of contributions that exceed the limits, treats some authorized committee and recall-related receipts as candidate or recall campaign contributions, and preserves specific exemptions and special-election rules. This is a modification of existing campaign finance law—adjusting contribution limits, introducing a new state-employee contribution cap, creating dollar-per-eligible-voter formulas for party/caucus donations, clarifying donation timing and treatment of recall-related funds, and imposing source and jurisdictional restrictions. It is principally a procedural and limits change to campaign finance rules rather than creating a new crime; it also includes an acceptance prohibition for contributions that exceed the stated limits. Important contextual gaps in the provided text: the effective date of the amendment is not stated; the definition of “state employee” is referenced but not included in these extracts; the $250 aggregate state-employee limit does not specify its temporal scope (for example, per election or per year) and its relationship to the per-election limits is not explained; several referenced definitions (such as independent expenditure and electioneering communication) are cited but not shown here.

If enacted, the bill would cap how much people and groups can give to many local and state candidates and to recall campaigns, generally limiting most contributions to $800 per election for local offices and $1,600 for port or nonlegislative state offices, while parties and caucus committees could give larger sums tied to the number of eligible voters in a jurisdiction. It also creates a new $250 aggregate limit on contributions from state employees to the listed candidates/committees, restricts out-of-state corporations, very small unions, and inactive political committees from making reportable contributions to state office candidates or recall efforts, and sets modest annual caps on non-individual contributions to caucus or party committees. The practical result would be smaller maximum checks to candidates and recall committees, a shift of fundraising emphasis to local individual donors and permitted party sources, and reduced access for certain entities; campaigns and parties will need to monitor these new limits to avoid accepting prohibited contributions. Important details are unclear in the text provided: there is no stated effective date for the changes, the definition and timing for the $250 state-employee limit (for example whether it is per election or per year) are not given here, and the bill refers to other defined terms (like “state employee,” independent expenditures, and electioneering communications) without including those definitions, so some implementation and enforcement questions remain.