Background: Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a significant legislative rule is defined as a rule that adopts a substantive provision of law, the violation of which results in a penalty or sanction; establishes or revises permit or license requirements; or results in a significant change to a policy or regulatory program. When developing significant legislative rules, certain agencies must determine the costs and benefits; the least burdensome alternatives; coordinate regulations with the requirements of state and federal law; and develop an implementation, evaluation, and education plan.

The Public Records Act requires agencies to make documents available for public inspection and copying including adopted policies and interpretative statements, administrative staff manuals and instructions that affect the public, planning policies, and goals; and factual staff and consultant reports and studies, scientific reports, and correspondence relating to any regulatory responsibilities of the agency. Agencies must maintain an index of these documents. An agency may rely on, cite as precedent, or invoke a public record that is indexed and available to the public; or when affected parties have been notified in a timely manner.

The Department of Ecology (Ecology) is organized into ten environmental management programs. The Shorelands and Environmental Assistance Program, in part, assists with state and local responsibilities for administering the state Water Pollution Control Act and the Shoreline Management Act. In addition, the program activities include providing assistance to communities with watershed planning, floods and floodplain management, the State Environmental Policy Act, the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, and the Washington Conservation Corps.

Ecology's Water Quality Program addresses ground and surface water quality, non-point pollution, permitting of point source pollution, stormwater, wastewater treatment, and water quality assessment. This program is responsible for implementing state and federal water pollution control laws. Wastewater permits specify discharge limits, conditions, and requirements. The Water Quality Program duties also include administration of water quality grants and loans, aquatic plant management, and water quality assessment.

In 2013 legislation was enacted requiring Ecology to identify peer-reviewed science, scientific literature, and other sources relied upon for preparing a significant agency action before taking a significant agency action within its Water Quality or Shorelands and Environmental Assistance programs. Ecology must also make available on its website the index of records, as required by the Public Records Act, of public records invoked or relied upon in support of a proposed significant agency action.

Summary of Bill: Ecology must identify and categorize, in the form of a bibliography or citation list, the sources of information that it relies upon to support significant agency actions on its website. Each source of information relied upon must be designated by Ecology as belonging to one of the following categories:

independently peer-reviewed by a third party;
internally peer-reviewed by Ecology staff;
externally peer-reviewed by Ecology-selected persons;
openly reviewed documents whose review was not limited to invited organizations or individuals;
legal and policy documents;
data from primary research or monitoring activities that has not been otherwise peer reviewed;
records of the best professional judgment of Ecology employees and other individuals; and
other sources of information.

The categories are declared to not imply or infer a hierarchy or a level of quality of the source of information.

The reference to a specific subsection of the Public Records Act governing the use of indexed records by government agencies is replaced with a reference to the entire section which establishes indexing requirements for state and local agencies.