HB1753 – Creates requirements for consultation with tribes on expenditures from the climate commitment act.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Lekanoff (D; 40th District; parts of Whatcom, Skagit and San Juan counties.) (Co-Sponsor Representative Fitzgibbon -D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology February 16th, and passed out of committee the 22nd. Referred to Ways & Means; had a hearing there February 26th, passed out of committee and referred to Rules the 28th. Passed by the Senate March 4th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 13th; replaced by a substitute making a few small changes and passed out of committee January 27th. Referred to Appropriations; had a hearing there on February 4th; passed out of committee February 5th. Referred to Rules; amended on the floor by the prime sponsor, creating a capacity development grant program to support tribal participation and making other changes in the process which are summarized by staff at the end of the striker.  Passed by the House.

Summary –
The bill would require State agencies that allocate funding or administer grants using revenue from the Climate Commitment Act (aka the cap and invest bill) to consult in a new process with any affected tribe on all funding decisions and programs that might impact tribal resources, including cultural resources, fisheries, archaeological or sacred sites, and other rights and interests in lands reserved or protected by federal treaty, statute, or executive order. (It covers the use of revenue from the climate investment account, the climate commitment account, and the natural climate solutions account, and the requirements of the bill would also apply to local governments’ projects and programs receiving funding from those.)

Applicants for funding would be required to engage in a preapplication process with any tribes within a project area at the earliest possible date. That would include providing a notice to the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and any affected tribes including the detailed scope of the project and its location, preliminary application details available to Federal, State, or local governmental jurisdictions, and all publicly available materials, including public funding sources. An applicant would also be required to offer to discuss the project and its potential impacts with them. (The notification and offer to initiate discussion, or the reason why a discussion has not occurred, would have to be documented with a funding application when it was filed, and a copy of the application would have to be delivered to the Department and to the affected tribes.) If any funding decision, program, project, or activity that impacted lands or fisheries within which a tribe possesses reserved rights were funded from the accounts without such a consultation, an affected tribe could request that all further action on it cease until meaningful consultation had been completed.

Any affected tribe could request a formal review of a completed consultation by submitting a request to the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs and notifying the agencies involved and the Department. The agencies and each tribe would be required to meet separately to initiate a discussion within twenty days of the request, unless the affected tribes agreed to conduct a joint consultation with the state. After the formal review, an affected tribe or an state agency could request that the Governor and an elected tribal leader or leaders meet to formally consider recommendations from the parties. After that, the Governor or an elected tribal leader could call for the state and tribe or tribes to enter into formal mediation, conducted as a government-to-government proceeding, with each government retaining their right to a final decision that met their separate obligations and interests. Mediators would be jointly selected by the parties, and any agreement between the governor and a tribal leader or leaders resulting from the mediation would  be binding. Any party could still initiate further steps, including legal review, to resolve a continuing disagreement.  (During these steps, agencies would not be allowed to approve or release funding, or make other formal decisions to advance a project, including permitting, except when they were legally required to.)

The bill would require the Office of Indian Affairs to coordinate with the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and tribes in developing a periodically updated consultation process, including best practices for early, meaningful, and effective consultation, early notification and engagement by applicants and tribes as part of the preapplication process, and protocols for communication and collaboration with tribes. The Office would provide training and other technical assistance to agencies (and to local governments that requested it) as they implemented the required consultation.