This bill amends existing budget law (RCW 43.88.030 and 43.88.055) and makes procedural and definitional changes to how the governor and state agencies prepare and submit operating and capital budget documents. It requires the director of financial management to give agencies complete biennial budget submission instructions at least three months before their documents are due to OFM, requires the governor’s biennial budget to include a detailed budget message and many specific schedules and exhibits (including revenue estimates based on forecast councils or OFM, detailed revenue and expenditure tabulations, Puget Sound water quality implementation costs, postretirement adjustment reporting, and amortization of certain retirement liabilities), and imposes fiscal constraints on the governor’s operating budget beginning 2021-2023: the budget must leave a positive ending fund balance for the general fund and defined related funds and have a projected maintenance level that does not exceed available fiscal resources for the next ensuing biennium, subject to specified exceptions. The bill also tightens capital budget documentation and adds new procedural requirements. For capital requests in the 2025-2027 and 2027-2029 biennia, projects showing a “substantially increased” cost (defined as more than 15 percent above the prior agency request relied on by the legislature, adjusted for C-100 inflation factors) must include a statement explaining the amount and reason for the increase and, if due to a design change, must include the original construction cost estimate. It requires standard terms (including a uniform definition of “normal maintenance”), mandates detailed capital planning documents and OFM-formatted cost breakdowns for major projects over $5 million, requires projected operations and maintenance costs for certain land acquisitions, prohibits unilateral format changes that affect comparability of budget information without legislative concurrence, and directs a joint legislative/OFM committee to define “capital project.” The legislature is required to enact a four-year balanced budget with similar ending-balance and projected-maintenance constraints, with enumerated exceptions. The bill also defines “related funds” to include four specified accounts. Some textual and contextual elements are missing from the extracted material. The capital budget subsection ends mid-sentence in the excerpt, the final official definition of “capital project” will depend on a future joint committee report that is not included, the C-100 inflation factor and certain cross-referenced provisions are not defined here, and the full amended text of RCW 43.88.055 beyond the provided excerpts is not included.

If enacted, state agencies that prepare operating and capital budget requests will face stricter and more detailed reporting requirements, earlier procedural deadlines from OFM, and new content checks that can limit spending choices. Agencies must provide detailed revenue and expenditure schedules, identify costs to implement the Puget Sound water quality plan, include post-retirement and debt items, and for major capital projects supply standardized component cost estimates and, when costs rise more than 15 percent (adjusted for inflation), a written explanation plus original-design cost estimates if design changed. The governor’s office and OFM will have clearer rules to ensure the operating budget leaves a positive ending balance and that projected maintenance costs do not exceed available resources, which will likely constrain new spending proposals; the Legislature is required to adopt a four-year balanced budget consistent with those limits. The groups most affected are state agencies preparing budgets (more staff time and reporting work), OFM and the governor’s budget office (greater oversight and formatting duties), and the Legislature (tighter budget constraints and review responsibilities); institutions of higher education and some separately elected officials retain limited exclusions from certain executive-branch adjustments. Important implementation details remain unclear in the available text: the final legal definition of “related funds,” the complete capital budget subsection, the formal definition of “capital project,” and how C-100 inflation adjustments are to be applied are missing, so agencies and the Legislature may face uncertainty about how to meet some new requirements until those pieces are finalized.