H-2646.1
HOUSE BILL 2327
State of Washington
69th Legislature
2026 Regular Session
By Representatives Dent and Reeves
Prefiled 01/08/26. Read first time 01/12/26. Referred to Committee on Agriculture & Natural Resources.
AN ACT Relating to directing an audit of county forest board lands; creating new sections; and providing expiration dates.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. (1)(a) The legislature finds that since statehood, 21 counties took possession of approximately 538,000 acres of tax foreclosed land capable of producing timber. In 1935, after passage of chapter 126, Laws of 1935, those counties deeded those timberlands to the state forest board, now the department of natural resources.
(b) Chapter 126, Laws of 1935 provided a trust structure, where upon the exchange of deeds, the timberlands would be held in trust and protected from sale in perpetuity for the purpose of revenue generation from timber and other products. This trust structure referenced and incorporated chapter 154, Laws of 1923, which recognized the entity that transferred the land to the state as the grantor, with reserved rights to valuable materials on the lands. The 1935 law explicitly added "forest products" to the list of valuable materials, and provided for the deeded timberlands to be administered by the state as trustee, with the grantor counties as the beneficiaries of the future net revenue from timber harvests.