Washington Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act

HOUSE/SENATE BILL ____

BY __________ (Introduced by request)

AN ACT Relating to the establishment of state programs for food and commodity assurance to ensure the material security of all Washington residents; adding new chapters to Title 15 and Title 43 RCW; making appropriations; and providing effective dates.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

LONG TITLE

AN ACT Relating to the creation of the Washington Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, and, in connection therewith, establishing the Washington Food Assurance Program by adding a new chapter to Title 15 RCW; creating the Washington Essential Goods Program by adding a new chapter to Title 43 RCW; making appropriations; and providing for effective dates and implementation schedules.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

Washington has a citizen initiative process. Under Article II, Section 1 of the Washington State Constitution, the people reserve the power to propose laws by initiative. There are two initiative types: Initiative to the People (placed directly on the ballot) and Initiative to the Legislature (submitted to the Legislature, which may enact it, reject it, or propose an alternative). The signature requirement for statewide initiative petitions is eight percent (8%) of the votes cast for the office of Governor at the last regular gubernatorial election. Based on the November 2024 general election, the current requirement is approximately 324,516 valid signatures (Washington Secretary of State, Initiative and Referendum Procedures).

FILING: An initiative is filed with the Washington Secretary of State. Proponents must submit the proposed measure for assignment of a serial number and for review by the Office of the Code Reviser. The Attorney General prepares an official ballot title. This process is governed by Article II, Section 1 of the Washington Constitution and RCW 29A.72 (State Initiative and Referendum).

Alternatively, this bill may be introduced through the Legislature by any member of the House of Representatives or the Senate.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee or the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks Committee, with referral to the House Appropriations Committee or the Senate Ways and Means Committee for the fiscal provisions.

FISCAL NOTE: The Office of Financial Management (OFM) prepares fiscal notes for all bills with budgetary impact pursuant to RCW 43.88A.

FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (25 of 49 Senators; 50 of 98 Representatives). Governor's signature, or veto override by two-thirds of each chamber.

SESSION: The Sixty-Ninth Legislature (2027 Regular Session). The Washington Legislature convenes on the second Monday of January each year. In odd-numbered years the regular session is limited to 105 consecutive days; in even-numbered years, to 60 consecutive days (Article II, Section 12, Washington Constitution).

TRIBAL CONSULTATION: The State of Washington recognizes twenty-nine (29) federally recognized Indian tribes within its borders. Pursuant to the Centennial Accord (1989), the Millennium Agreement (1999), and Executive Order 21-02, the Legislature shall ensure government-to-government consultation with affected tribal nations during the development and implementation of this act, particularly with respect to food sovereignty, traditional food systems, and natural resource management.

HISTORY: A version of this proposal was first developed in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools. The original proposal was developed for the State of Colorado. The present version adapts the proposal to the State of Washington, incorporating research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), which provides the evidentiary foundation for this legislation.

LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. Legislative findings and declaration.

(1) The Legislature hereby finds, determines, and declares that:

FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE ACTION:

(a0) THE FEDERAL STRUCTURAL OVERLOAD. The United States federal government is not failing through corruption but through structural mismatch between its founding scale and its current scale. The Constitution was designed for approximately four million people. It now governs 335 million. Twenty-two federal government shutdowns have occurred since 1976, including the 2025 shutdown of forty-three days, the longest in United States history, which furloughed approximately 670,000 federal employees. The House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, producing a representation ratio of approximately 762,000 constituents per representative, the worst in the OECD. Senate cloture motions, forty-nine total between 1917 and 1970, now exceed two thousand per decade. The federal debt ceiling has been raised seventy-eight times since 1960. These are not partisan failures. They are the predictable output of a constitutional machine designed for 1789 operating in 2026 (Cooper, "Historical Apoplexy, Paper VII: The Structural Overload," 2026);

(a0a) THE MULTI-EXECUTIVE PRECEDENT. A single overburdened executive is not the only constitutional design available. The Swiss Federal Council has governed Switzerland through a seven-member council with a rotating one-year presidency since 1848, one hundred seventy-eight years, sustaining citizen trust above eighty percent. The Roman Republic operated under two annually elected consuls of equal authority for over four hundred eighty years. The Legislature notes this precedent not to propose its adoption in this act, but to establish that the federal structural overload described in finding (a0) is a design choice, not a law of nature, and that a state acting under its own reserved authority is acting within the constitutional tradition, not against it;

(a1) THE IMPLICATION FOR THE STATE OF WASHINGTON. The Legislature finds that the federal apparatus is structurally incapable of delivering the reform this act addresses at the scale and cadence Washington residents require. Federal H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21, 2025) shifted SNAP administrative costs from an approximately fifty percent federal share to an approximately twenty-five percent federal share, effective fiscal year 2027, imposing substantial new costs on Washington's General Fund without a corresponding increase in benefit amounts (Washington Office of Financial Management, H.R. 1 impact analysis, 2026). Washington currently routes approximately $1.92 billion annually in Basic Food (SNAP) benefits through commercial retailers, where 75.7 cents of every dollar pays for markup rather than food. The federal government imposed the cost shift and cannot pass its own budget. If Washington is to address food insecurity within the lifetime of current residents, it must act under its own legislative power;

(a3) UNIVERSE 25 REBUTTAL. The Calhoun mouse experiment ("Universe 25") is frequently invoked against any abundance-distribution proposal. The argument is a misread. Calhoun's mice collapsed not because they had abundance, but because abundance arrived without institutional infrastructure: food, water, nesting material, and space, with no education, no governance, no intergenerational transmission, no civic role. Abundance of resources plus abundance of ease produces Universe 25. Abundance of resources plus structured civic obligation produces the Augustus annona (400 years), the Defense Commissary (159 years), and the Mabu Co settlement (800 years). The Roman grain dole was distributed to citizens who had civic obligations: military service, public works, jury duty, voting. The commissary is distributed to military families inside an institution that defines daily structure. The institutional scaffolding is what distinguishes sustainable abundance from collapse. Joint Base Lewis-McChord (one of the largest joint military installations in the United States), Naval Base Kitsap (home of the Bangor Trident submarine base), and Fairchild Air Force Base operate this template on Washington soil today, and Costco Wholesale, headquartered in Issaquah and founded in Seattle in 1983, has operated the membership-based at-cost wholesale model in the private sector for forty-two years from this state;

(a2) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. The Legislature finds, on the documented record of the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), that inaction by a state legislature possessing the constitutional authority, the fiscal capacity, and the documented need to act constitutes active harm. The burden of justification rests on denial, not on action;

FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:

(a) According to the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 13.5 percent of United States households experienced food insecurity in 2023, and 5.1 percent experienced very low food security. Approximately 840,000 Washington residents, roughly ten percent of the state population of 8,115,100, lack consistent access to adequate food (Northwest Harvest; Washington State Department of Agriculture, 2024);

(b) Washington's agricultural sector generates approximately $14.0 billion in annual cash receipts from farm marketings, a record high set in 2023, with apple production alone accounting for $1.99 billion, first in the nation (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2024 Washington Agricultural Statistics). Washington ranks first nationally in production of apples, sweet cherries, hops, pears, blueberries, spearmint oil, and red raspberries, and is a leading producer of wheat, potatoes, wine grapes, and cattle. The state's productive capacity vastly exceeds its population's food requirements. Food insecurity in Washington is a distribution problem, not a production problem;

(c) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm share of the United States food dollar is 24.3 cents, with the remaining 75.7 cents allocated to processing, transportation, wholesale, retail, and food service markup. Total United States food-at-home spending is approximately $1.09 trillion; production cost is approximately $213 billion to $327 billion. The difference of approximately $496 billion represents markup above production cost;

(d) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all 47.9 million food-insecure Americans is approximately $32 billion, which represents 6.5 percent of the $496 billion markup between production cost and retail price (Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025);

(e) The United States military commissary system, established by the Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at 10 U.S.C. Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution continuously for one hundred fifty-nine (159) years across 236 commissary stores worldwide, delivering savings of 17 to 25 percent below civilian retail prices within the continental United States to approximately 2.8 million authorized users. This program is funded by all federal taxpayers but available only to military families and retirees, establishing a proven precedent for government-operated at-cost food distribution. Washington is home to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Naval Station Kitsap (including the Bangor Trident submarine base), and Fairchild Air Force Base, whose service members and families already access the commissary system that the taxpayers of Washington fund but are denied;

(f) The Costco Wholesale Corporation, headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, and founded in Seattle in 1983, has demonstrated for over forty (40) years that a membership-based wholesale distribution model can deliver consumer goods at near-cost pricing while operating profitably through volume and membership fees. The Costco model provides empirical proof, originating in this state, that high-volume, low-markup distribution is commercially viable at national scale. The food assurance program established in this act applies the same structural principle, volume-based at-cost distribution, as a public infrastructure model;

(g) The geographer Albrecht Penck calculated in 1925 that Earth's carrying capacity was eight billion people using 1920s agricultural technology. The current world population is approximately eight billion. Since agricultural technology has advanced substantially beyond 1920s capacity, scarcity of food is not a physical constraint but a distribution and policy constraint (Penck, 1925; Cohen, "How Many People Can the Earth Support?," 1995);

(h) The United States has approximately 293,000 manufacturing facilities. Studies indicate that 10,000 to 15,000 facilities would suffice for universal material abundance, representing 20 to 30 times overcapacity, with United States manufacturing currently operating at approximately 77 percent capacity utilization (Federal Reserve; Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025);

(i) In 2024 alone, 7,325 retail store locations closed in the United States (Coresight Research; Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025), while 54 million Americans live in food deserts. The commercial retail grocery model is contracting as a distribution system;

(j) The economist John Kenneth Galbraith described in "The Affluent Society" (1958) the condition of private opulence alongside public squalor, the coexistence of enormous private productive capacity with inadequate public provision of basic needs. This condition persists in Washington, where the state produces $14 billion in agricultural output while approximately 840,000 residents cannot consistently feed themselves, and where King County alone recorded 16,868 persons experiencing homelessness on a single night (2024 Point-in-Time Count);

(k) The economist Thorstein Veblen documented in "The Engineers and the Price System" (1921) that production capacity can be held below its full output to keep prices above production cost. The gap between Washington's productive capacity and its residents' material security reflects this structural dynamic;

(l) Washington residents received approximately $1.92 billion in SNAP (Basic Food) benefits in federal fiscal year 2024, routed through commercial retailers where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather than food production. At-cost pricing would deliver approximately four (4) times the food value for each benefit dollar;

FINDINGS RELATING TO HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT FOR FOOD INFRASTRUCTURE:

(l1) Augustus Caesar (63 BC to 14 AD) formalized the annona civica, the monthly grain distribution to approximately 200,000 Roman citizens, as civic infrastructure in the same administrative category as roads and aqueducts. Augustus was, by every account, a tyrant: the Second Triumvirate proscriptions listed approximately three hundred senators and two thousand equestrians for execution, and Suetonius records him ordering a knight named Pinarius stabbed at a public assembly for taking notes. Yet the same man understood that hungry citizens are broken infrastructure. The annona operated for over four hundred years. The emperor Nerva (96 to 98 AD) expanded the program by establishing the alimenta, low-interest loans to rural farmers with interest redirected to child nutrition. The Tabula Alimentaria from Veleia (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI 1147), a bronze inscription recording specific loan amounts and child support payments, still exists and can be visited at the Parma Museum. American political discourse has not yet reached the administrative competence an authoritarian emperor reached two millennia ago;

(l2) In September 2024, Nature Ecology and Evolution published research documenting a permanent settlement at 4,446 metres elevation on the Tibetan Plateau (Mabu Co) that sustained sedentary abundance for approximately 800 years beginning 4,400 years ago, using lake-centred fishing and environmental knowledge. The question whether technology will finally make abundance possible is itself evidence of civilizational memory loss. The answer has existed for four millennia;

(l3) Approximately forty-nine million years ago, the freshwater fern Azolla bloomed across the Arctic Ocean and sequestered enough atmospheric CO2 over approximately 800,000 years to contribute to Earth's transition from a hothouse to an icehouse climate (Brinkhuis et al., Nature 441, 2006). Azolla fixes nitrogen autonomously through a symbiotic cyanobacterium (Anabaena azollae), requires no soil, doubles its biomass every two to five days, and contains 15 to 30 percent protein by dry weight. The biological principle, that distributed small-unit processes operating exponentially can alter planetary-scale systems, is the same principle the commissary applies at the industrial scale. Azolla has been cultivated as a rice-paddy companion crop in Southeast Asia for over a thousand years and is directly relevant to Washington's agricultural sector as a potential nitrogen-fixing feedstock for state aquaculture and poultry operations;

(l4) The State of Washington therefore inherits two independent operational records, and one geological record, establishing at-cost distribution as sustainable civic infrastructure: the Defense Commissary (1867 to present, 159 years), the Roman annona and alimenta (approximately 27 BC to the fifth century AD, over 400 years), and the biological record documenting distributed abundance as a baseline planetary characteristic across geologic time;

(l5) THIS IS NOT GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF FARMS, PROCESSING, OR DISTRIBUTION. In April 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City announced a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem, a model in which the government owns and operates the retail facility. The model established in this act is structurally different. The government does not own farms, processing plants, or trucking fleets. It operates distribution centers that contract with private Washington agricultural producers, private distributors, and existing private supply chain infrastructure to purchase food at production cost and provide it at production cost plus a five percent surcharge. The upstream supply chain remains entirely private. Currency continues for luxury, custom, and specialty goods. The Defense Commissary Agency has operated this exact model since 1867 without acquiring a single farm. Costco Wholesale Corporation, headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, since 1983, has demonstrated for over forty years that membership-based, volume-driven, near-cost pricing is commercially viable at national scale. The bill provides a floor. It does not replace the market. It removes the markup on the floor;

FINDINGS RELATING TO AUTOMATION, DEINDUSTRIALIZATION, AND THE AMAZON PARADOX:

(m) Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Seattle, Washington, operates more than one million (1,000,000) warehouse robots across its fulfillment network. Studies document that Amazon facilities with robotic automation report higher serious injury rates than non-robotic facilities. Washington is simultaneously the headquarters of one of the most aggressive automation companies on earth and a state whose workers are among the most immediately exposed to that automation. This is the Amazon Paradox: the state that hosts the corporation benefits from its tax revenue and employment while bearing the first-order costs of the displacement its technology creates (Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025);

(n) The Boeing Company, once the largest private employer in Washington, closed its 787 Dreamliner shadow factory in Everett in April 2025, shifting production and engineering to Charleston, South Carolina. This continues a decades-long deindustrialization pattern in which Washington's manufacturing base, and the middle-class employment it sustained, has been relocated or automated. The Legislature finds that the food and commodity programs established in this act address the structural displacement caused by deindustrialization and automation;

(o) The Agility Robotics Digit humanoid robot, manufactured in Salem, Oregon, ninety (90) miles from the Washington border, is designed to perform warehouse labor currently performed by human workers, and has been deployed in fulfillment center operations. The convergence of warehouse robotics, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence represents a structural shift in the labor market that cannot be addressed through retraining alone. The food and commodity assurance program established in this act provides the material floor necessary for citizens to weather this transition (Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025);

(o1) THE DISPLACEMENT IS ALREADY HAPPENING. Aurora Innovation launched the first commercial driverless trucking service on the Dallas-Houston corridor with no safety driver in the cab. Waymo operates robotaxi service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Nuro runs autonomous last-mile delivery. Carbon Robotics' LaserWeeder kills weeds with precision lasers on commercial farms. These are deployed systems, not prototypes. In 2024 alone, 7,325 retail store locations closed nationally, a sixty-nine percent increase over 2023, with more closures projected for 2025. The retail contraction and autonomous freight are eliminating the jobs in question regardless of whether this act passes. The bill does not cause the displacement. The bill is the floor that catches the displaced worker. The commissary still employs truckers. At-cost distribution does not eliminate distribution labor; it eliminates the 75.7 percent markup that sits on top of distribution labor;

FINDINGS RELATING TO TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE BOLDT DECISION:

(kk) The State of Washington is home to twenty-nine (29) federally recognized Indian tribes with treaty-reserved rights affirmed by the United States Supreme Court and the federal courts. In United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974), the Boldt Decision, Judge George Boldt affirmed that the treaty tribes of Washington retain the right to take fish at their usual and accustomed grounds and stations and are entitled to up to fifty percent (50%) of the harvestable fish. The Boldt Decision established that treaty rights are not grants from the state but pre-existing sovereign rights retained by tribes;

(ll) The food and commodity assurance program established in this act shall be designed and implemented in consultation with Washington's twenty-nine (29) federally recognized tribes, respecting tribal food sovereignty, traditional food systems, and the government-to-government relationship required by the Centennial Accord (1989), the Millennium Agreement (1999), and Executive Order 21-02. Tribal communities shall have the option to participate in, adapt, or operate parallel food assurance programs on reservation lands under tribal authority;

FINDINGS RELATING TO EAST-WEST WASHINGTON:

(mm) The Cascade Range divides Washington into two distinct economic and geographic regions. Western Washington, containing the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, hosts the technology sector and approximately seventy-five percent (75%) of the state's population. Eastern Washington contains the state's agricultural heartland, the Yakima Valley, the Palouse, and the Columbia Basin, producing the majority of the state's $14 billion agricultural output, yet experiencing higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, and limited access to grocery retail. The program established in this act serves both sides of the Cascades: Eastern Washington produces the food, Western Washington generates the revenue, and the at-cost distribution network connects them;

(nn) The Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools, developed the original version of this proposal for the State of Colorado in 2016. SMRF was founded by Imran Stanton Cooper with the express purpose of training citizens in legislative drafting, policy analysis, and democratic participation. The present legislation adapts that 2016 proposal to the State of Washington, incorporating research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026);

FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH: WHY THIS ACT REACHES BEYOND BARE SURVIVAL:

(p) Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies, commencing in 1967 and continuing to the present with 10,308 subjects, established that among British civil servants with universal healthcare, full employment, and no absolute poverty, the lowest employment grade experienced three times the mortality rate of the highest grade. Standard risk factors, smoking, cholesterol, and blood pressure, explained less than forty percent of the mortality gradient. The hierarchy itself, independent of absolute material deprivation, produces lethal health outcomes;

(q) Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of wild baboon populations in the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate social position produces chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis, immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When a tuberculosis outbreak eliminated the most aggressive males from a troop, hierarchy collapsed, and the surviving subordinates' cortisol levels normalized, demonstrating that the health damage was caused by the hierarchy, not by inherent individual biology (Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," 1994; "Behave," 2017);

(r) Dr. Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate social status directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis, and coronary artery disease, with cingulate cortex serotonin identified as the neurological nexus linking depression to cardiovascular disease (Shively, 2009; 2014);

(s) Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, demonstrated that chronic psychological stress shortens telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomal DNA, accelerating cellular aging. Caregivers of chronically ill children had measurably shorter telomeres proportional to years of stress. Poverty and subordination age human beings at the molecular level (Blackburn and Epel, "The Telomere Effect," 2017);

(t) These findings collectively establish that poverty and social hierarchy are not merely economic conditions but medical conditions with documented physiological pathways that produce measurable morbidity and mortality. A food and commodity assurance program therefore constitutes a public health intervention with quantifiable healthcare cost reduction potential;

(t1) THE GRADIENT IS THE DISEASE. The Whitehall, Serengeti, Wake Forest, and telomere findings converge on a single conclusion: the gap is the gradient, not the deprivation alone. A population can be fed, housed, and insured and still die on a schedule set by its rank. Treating sickness downstream of an untreated gradient is documented to fail across four research programs, six decades, and three species. Hierarchy itself kills. Removing the markup on food, the most basic and universal of material exposures, removes one rung of that gradient for every resident at once;

(t2) THE CORRECTED STRUCTURAL CRITIQUE. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) named a real disease at the wrong site. Stratification is the ocean, not the cup. The gradient is the disease; any single institution is downstream of it. The mortality gradient documented in findings (p) through (t1) runs through housing, diet, employment, and health access alike, and it is not produced by any one of them. This finding places food and commodity assurance correctly: not as a fix for a single broken institution, but as the removal of a structural exposure that runs through every institution at once (Cooper, "Historical Apoplexy, Paper V: The Targeting Error," 2025).

(2) The Legislature further finds that food and commodity assurance, established in this act, is both a material security program and, on the evidence of findings (p) through (t2), a public health intervention. The two purposes are not in tension. Feeding a population at cost removes a measured cause of morbidity and mortality. The arithmetic of the food and commodity assurance program and the physiology of the closing findings describe one program from two vantage points. On this record, denial is no longer neutral.

WASHINGTON FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. A new chapter is added to Title 15 RCW to read as follows:

15.__.010. Short title.

This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Washington Food Assurance Act."

15.__.020. Definitions.

As used in this chapter, unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

(1) "At-cost pricing" means the price of a food product calculated as the sum of the direct production cost paid to the producer or supplier plus a facility surcharge not to exceed five percent (5%) of the production cost, with no additional profit margin, markup, or marketing cost applied.

(2) "Department" means the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

(3) "Director" means the director of the department of agriculture.

(4) "Food assurance center" means a state-operated facility established under this chapter for the purpose of distributing food products to Washington residents at at-cost pricing.

(5) "Facility surcharge" means a charge not to exceed five percent (5%) of the production cost of a food product, applied to cover the operational costs of a food assurance center, including but not limited to facility maintenance, labor, utilities, and transportation.

(6) "Production cost" means the cost of producing a food product as determined by the department based on wholesale acquisition price from producers, cooperatives, or the most proximate point in the supply chain to the point of original production.

15.__.030. Washington food assurance program: creation and purpose.

(1) There is hereby created in the Department of Agriculture the Washington food assurance program.

(2) The purpose of the program is to establish state-operated food distribution centers where all Washington residents may purchase the full range of grocery products at at-cost pricing, modeled on the United States military commissary system as authorized by 10 U.S.C. Section 2484 and as operated by the Defense Commissary Agency continuously since 1867.

(3) The program shall:

(a) Establish and operate food assurance centers throughout the state of Washington;

(b) Purchase food products directly from Washington producers, cooperatives, and wholesale suppliers at or near production cost;

(c) Sell food products to Washington residents at at-cost pricing as defined in section 15.__.020;

(d) Prioritize procurement from Washington farms, ranches, orchards, and fisheries to the maximum extent practicable;

(e) Accept all forms of payment including but not limited to cash, electronic benefit transfer (EBT), Basic Food (SNAP) benefits, and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) vouchers;

(f) Operate without profit motive, with all revenue above operational costs reinvested in program expansion.

15.__.040. Pilot food assurance centers: locations and timeline.

(1) Within two (2) years of the effective date of this chapter, the department shall establish not fewer than five (5) pilot food assurance centers in the following regions:

(a) Two (2) centers in King County and the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, with at least one center located in a neighborhood identified as a food desert by the USDA Economic Research Service;

(b) One (1) center in Pierce County or the Tacoma metropolitan area, in proximity to the military and civilian communities surrounding Joint Base Lewis-McChord;

(c) One (1) center in Spokane County, serving the Inland Northwest and Eastern Washington;

(d) One (1) center in the Yakima Valley, serving the agricultural communities and farmworker populations of Central Washington.

(2) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this chapter, the department shall expand the program to not fewer than twenty-five (25) food assurance centers statewide, with at least one center in each congressional district, at least three (3) centers serving rural communities as defined by the department, and at least one (1) center in each of the following regions:

(a) The Tri-Cities (Richland-Kennewick-Pasco);

(b) The Bellingham and Whatcom County area;

(c) Clark County and Vancouver;

(d) The Olympic Peninsula;

(e) The Snohomish County and Everett area.

(3) The department shall prioritize locations with the highest rates of food insecurity, the greatest distances to existing grocery retail, and the largest populations residing in food deserts.

(4) The department shall consult with the twenty-nine (29) federally recognized tribes in Washington regarding the establishment of food assurance centers serving tribal communities, respecting tribal food sovereignty and the government-to-government relationship required by the Centennial Accord and the Millennium Agreement.

15.__.050. Washington food assurance account: creation.

(1) The Washington food assurance account is created in the state treasury.

(2) The account shall consist of:

(a) Moneys appropriated by the Legislature;

(b) Revenue from facility surcharges collected by food assurance centers;

(c) Grants, gifts, and donations from any source, public or private;

(d) Any federal funds made available for food distribution programs.

(3) Moneys in the account may be spent only after appropriation. Expenditures from the account may be used only for the purposes of this chapter.

(4) The department shall maintain separate accounting for each food assurance center and shall publish annual financial reports demonstrating the production cost, facility surcharge, and total cost to consumers for each product category.

15.__.060. Washington producer priority.

(1) The department shall establish procurement protocols that prioritize Washington-produced food products. Not less than fifty percent (50%) of the total wholesale acquisition value of food products purchased by food assurance centers shall be from Washington producers in the first three (3) years, increasing to not less than seventy percent (70%) by the fifth year.

(2) The department shall establish guaranteed purchase contracts with Washington farms, ranches, orchards, fisheries, and cooperatives to provide stable revenue for Washington agricultural producers and to reduce producer dependence on commodity market price volatility.

(3) Procurement shall include products from Washington's diverse agricultural sectors including but not limited to tree fruit (apples, cherries, pears), berries, hops, wine grapes, wheat, potatoes, cattle, dairy, and seafood.

15.__.070. Reporting.

(1) The department shall submit an annual report to the Legislature by January 31 of each year, beginning the second year after the effective date of this chapter, containing:

(a) The number and locations of food assurance centers in operation;

(b) Total sales volume and number of customers served;

(c) Average savings per customer compared to commercial retail pricing;

(d) Percentage of procurement from Washington producers;

(e) Operational costs and surcharge revenue;

(f) Progress toward self-sufficiency through surcharge revenue;

(g) Impact on Basic Food (SNAP) benefit utilization rates in served areas.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. A new chapter is added to Title 43 RCW to read as follows:

WASHINGTON ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM

43.__.010. Short title.

This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Washington Essential Goods Act."

43.__.020. Definitions.

As used in this chapter, unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

(1) "Below-retail pricing" means a price calculated as the production cost plus a surcharge not to exceed ten percent (10%) of the production cost.

(2) "Essential goods" means basic consumer products necessary for daily life, including but not limited to:

(a) Clothing and footwear;

(b) Household cleaning and maintenance supplies;

(c) Personal hygiene products;

(d) School and educational supplies;

(e) Basic home furnishings;

(f) Basic tools and hardware.

(3) "Department" means the Washington State Department of Commerce.

43.__.030. Washington essential goods program: creation and purpose.

(1) There is hereby created in the Department of Commerce the Washington essential goods program.

(2) The purpose of the program is to create procurement contracts with Washington manufacturers to produce and distribute essential goods at below-retail pricing through food assurance centers established under chapter 15.__ RCW and through dedicated distribution points established under this chapter.

(3) The program shall:

(a) Identify essential goods categories suitable for Washington manufacturing;

(b) Establish guaranteed purchase contracts with Washington manufacturers to produce essential goods at production cost;

(c) Distribute essential goods at below-retail pricing through food assurance centers and through dedicated distribution points;

(d) Stimulate Washington's manufacturing sector through guaranteed demand contracts, with particular emphasis on communities affected by deindustrialization, including the Snohomish County and Everett area following Boeing's departure;

(e) Distribute essential goods on a schedule tiered by the permanence of the goods, as provided in section 43.__.040.

(4) The United States has approximately 293,000 manufacturing facilities, of which 10,000 to 15,000 would suffice for universal material abundance. Washington's advanced manufacturing sector has the capacity to meet the state's essential goods requirements through targeted procurement (Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025; Federal Reserve capacity utilization data).

43.__.040. Distribution model: tiered by permanence.

(1) The distribution of essential goods shall follow a model tiered by the permanence of the goods, drawing on the at-cost distribution principle described by Jacque Fresco ("Designing the Future," 2007), in which goods are distributed according to need:

(a) Constant-need goods, including consumable supplies, shall be distributed on a recurring basis through food assurance centers and dedicated distribution points;

(b) Semi-permanent goods, including clothing and household supplies, shall be distributed on a need-based schedule with reasonable limits to prevent hoarding;

(c) Permanent goods, including durable home furnishings, tools, and appliances, shall be distributed on a one-per-household basis;

(d) Currency continues for luxury, custom, and specialty goods not covered by the essential goods program.

43.__.050. Reporting.

(1) The department shall submit an annual report to the Legislature by January 31 of each year, beginning the second year after the effective date of this chapter, containing:

(a) Total procurement volume and value of contracts awarded to Washington manufacturers;

(b) Number and types of essential goods distributed;

(c) Average savings per consumer compared to commercial retail pricing;

(d) Number of Washington manufacturing jobs created or sustained through program contracts.

GENERAL PROVISIONS

NEW SECTION. Sec. 4. Appropriation and fiscal convergence.

(1) For the 2027-2029 biennium, the following sums are appropriated from the state general fund to the agencies indicated:

(a) To the Department of Agriculture, for the Washington food assurance program established in section 15.__.030: SIXTY-EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS ($68,000,000);

(b) To the Department of Commerce, for the Washington essential goods program established in section 43.__.030: TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS ($27,000,000);

(c) TOTAL APPROPRIATION: NINETY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($95,000,000).

(2) The total biennial appropriation of $95,000,000 represents approximately 0.12 percent of Washington's $77.8 billion biennial operating budget for 2025-2027 [SOURCE: Washington Office of Financial Management, 2025-27 Enacted Budgets]. This appropriation funds the pilot and expansion phases of the food assurance and essential goods programs; it is not the cost of the food itself, which residents purchase at production cost.

(3) THE FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. The at-cost food assurance program established in section 15.__.030, serving Washington's population of 8,115,100 residents [SOURCE: Washington Office of Financial Management, April 1 population estimates, 2025], requires approximately $2.51 billion per year at production cost ($309 per person per year for a baseline of staple food items at approximately thirty percent of cheapest retail price, per USDA Food Dollar Series methodology) [SOURCE: USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar Series, 2023]. Against Washington's biennial operating budget of approximately $77.8 billion (approximately $38.9 billion annual), this represents approximately 6.4 percent of annual Near General Fund spending. A fuller baseline at $609 per person per year, approximately $4.94 billion annually, or approximately 12.7 percent of annual spending, is retained as the expansion goal. This is not new money. It is the redirection of food spending residents and the state already make through a structurally more efficient channel.

(4) THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT IMPOSED ON WASHINGTON. Federal H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21, 2025) increases the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent, effective October 1, 2026. The Washington Office of Financial Management estimates this shift will impose approximately $66 million per year in additional state costs beginning in state fiscal year 2027 [SOURCE: Washington OFM, H.R. 1 Impacts on Washington State People and Budget, 2026]. Additionally, H.R. 1 requires states to contribute five to fifteen percent of SNAP benefit costs if the state payment error rate exceeds six percent; Feeding America Action estimates Washington's five percent exposure at approximately $95 million per year, and the fifteen percent band reaches an estimated $300 million per year [SOURCE: Feeding America Action, SNAP Cost Shifting in Washington]. Total potential annual fiscal exposure from SNAP policy changes alone: approximately $166 million to $366 million per year. Washington currently routes approximately $1.92 billion annually in Basic Food (SNAP) benefits through commercial retailers, where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather than food. Routed at cost through the food assurance centers established in section 15.__.030, approximately 95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food (production cost plus a five percent surcharge), an approximately fourfold increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar. The at-cost channel offsets the federal cost-shift on the same beneficiary population by a factor of several multiples.

(5) THE FISCAL CONVERGENCE. The arithmetic says ending the gap costs a single-digit percentage of the markup the state already pays. The operational template has run for one hundred fifty-nine years inside the same federal apparatus the state already funds. Washington is not asked to attempt something untested. Washington is asked to deliver to its own residents what its veterans have received since 1867.

(6) THE COST OF NOT ACTING. Healthcare cost reductions from improved nutrition and reduced exposure to the mortality gradient documented in findings (p) through (t2) are projected to offset a substantial portion of program costs within ten years. Washington's Apple Health (Medicaid) program expends billions annually on preventable diet-related chronic disease, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity-related conditions. A conservative ten percent reduction in diet-related Medicaid cost, achievable within ten years of full implementation, recovers hundreds of millions annually in state General Fund savings.

(7) REVENUE FRAMEWORK. Washington has no state income tax. The appropriation under this section shall be funded through the following existing revenue streams:

(a) The state general fund, which receives revenue from the business and occupation (B&O) tax, the retail sales tax, and other sources;

(b) The Legislature may designate a portion of the capital gains tax (7 percent, RCW 82.87), upheld as an excise tax by the Washington Supreme Court in Quinn v. State (March 24, 2023), as a dedicated funding source for the food assurance account established in this act;

(c) Federal matching funds available through SNAP and other nutrition programs shall be pursued to the maximum extent practicable;

(d) The food assurance program is designed to achieve operational self-sufficiency through volume surcharges within seven years of full implementation.

(8) THE FISCAL LOCK. The Legislature therefore finds that this act does not constitute new expenditure in any material sense. It redirects existing expenditure, federal SNAP dollars already flowing to Washington recipients and state Medicaid dollars already funding diet-related chronic disease, through a structurally more efficient mechanism. The argument that Washington cannot afford this act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the less efficient version of the same program and by the $166 million to $366 million in annual fiscal exposure that H.R. 1 imposes whether or not this act passes. The fiscal question is not whether to spend, but whether to continue spending several times as much as required to accomplish the same objective while absorbing a federal cost-shift the state did not request. Denial is no longer neutral.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 5. Severability.

If any provision of this act or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of this act which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are declared to be severable.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 6. Effective dates.

(1) This act takes effect July 1, 2028.

(2) The pilot food assurance centers required under section 15.__.040 shall be operational within two (2) years of the effective date, and the program shall expand to not fewer than twenty-five centers within five (5) years of the effective date.

(3) The essential goods program established under section 43.__.030 shall be operational within two (2) years of the effective date.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 7. Repeal of conflicting provisions.

All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with this act are hereby repealed.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 8. Tribal sovereignty preservation.

(1) Nothing in this act shall be construed to diminish, modify, or extinguish any treaty right, sovereign authority, or governmental power of any federally recognized Indian tribe in the state of Washington.

(2) The rights affirmed in United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974) (the Boldt Decision) and subsequent federal court orders are not affected by this act.

(3) Tribal nations may participate in, adapt, or operate parallel programs under tribal authority. The state shall provide technical assistance and funding upon request through the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs.

REFERENCES

The research and citations incorporated in this act include but are not limited to:

FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE: - Penck, Albrecht. Earth carrying capacity calculation (1925). - United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Food Dollar Series and Household Food Security reports. - Defense Commissary Agency, operational since 1867, codified at 10 U.S.C. Section 2484. - Galbraith, John Kenneth. "The Affluent Society" (1958). - Veblen, Thorstein. "The Engineers and the Price System" (1921). - Fresco, Jacque. "Designing the Future" (2007). - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "The Mathematics of Abundance: Two Proofs That Scarcity Is a Policy Choice" (2025). - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "Stolen Futures" (2025). - USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2024 Washington Agricultural Statistics. - Federal Reserve Board, Capacity Utilization Data (G.17). - Coresight Research, US retail store closure data (2024). - Northwest Harvest; Washington State Department of Agriculture. - Cohen, Joel. "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" (1995).

HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT: - Suetonius. "The Lives of the Twelve Caesars" (Life of Augustus). - Cassius Dio. "Roman History" (annona civica; Nerva alimenta). - Tabula Alimentaria from Veleia, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI 1147 (Parma Museum). - Yang, X., et al. "Sedentary settlement at Mabu Co, Tibetan Plateau." Nature Ecology and Evolution (September 2024). - Brinkhuis, H., et al. "Episodic fresh surface waters in the Eocene Arctic Ocean." Nature 441 (2006) (the Azolla Event). - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "Historical Apoplexy" Papers I, III, IV, and VIII (2025-2026).

STRUCTURAL OVERLOAD AND FEDERAL FISCAL CONTEXT: - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "Historical Apoplexy, Paper VII: The Structural Overload" (2026). - H.R. 1, Public Law 119-21 (2025), SNAP administrative cost-shift provisions. - Washington Office of Financial Management, H.R. 1 Impacts on Washington State People and Budget (2026). - Feeding America Action, SNAP Cost Shifting in Washington.

AUTOMATION AND DEINDUSTRIALIZATION: - Amazon.com, Inc. warehouse robotics deployment data. - Boeing Company, 787 Dreamliner Everett facility closure (2025). - Agility Robotics, Digit humanoid warehouse robot (Salem, Oregon). - Aurora Innovation; Waymo; Nuro; Carbon Robotics, deployed autonomous systems. - Costco Wholesale Corporation, Issaquah, Washington (founded 1983). - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "Stolen Futures" (2025).

PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE MORTALITY GRADIENT: - Marmot, Michael. Whitehall Studies I and II (1967-present). "The Status Syndrome" (2004). "The Health Gap" (2015). - Sapolsky, Robert. "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" (1994). "Behave" (2017). - Shively, Carol. Social stress, visceral obesity, and coronary artery atherosclerosis (2009; 2014). - Blackburn, Elizabeth. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2009). "The Telomere Effect" (2017, with Epel). - Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert. "Schooling in Capitalist America" (1976), cited for the targeting-error correction. - Cooper, Imran Stanton. "Historical Apoplexy, Paper V: The Targeting Error" (2025).

TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND TREATY RIGHTS: - United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974) (the Boldt Decision). - Centennial Accord between Federally Recognized Indian Tribes in Washington State and the State of Washington (1989). - Millennium Agreement (1999). - Executive Order 21-02 (Government-to-Government Relationship).

WASHINGTON-SPECIFIC DATA: - Washington Secretary of State, Initiative and Referendum Procedures. - Washington State Constitution, Article II, Section 1. - Revised Code of Washington, Titles 15 and 43. - Washington State Department of Agriculture. - Washington State Department of Commerce. - Office of Financial Management, 2025-2027 biennial operating budget ($77.8 billion Near General Fund). - Office of Financial Management, April 1 population estimates, 2025 (8,115,100). - Washington State Basic Food (SNAP) spending, FY2024 (~$1.92 billion). - King County Point-in-Time Count (2024): 16,868 persons experiencing homelessness. - Quinn v. State, Washington Supreme Court (March 24, 2023). - Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Naval Station Kitsap (Bangor), Fairchild Air Force Base. - Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), Colorado Division of Private Occupational Schools registration (2016).

END OF BILL

WASHINGTON FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT

Prepared for the Sixty-Ninth Legislature of the State of Washington, 2027 Regular Session.

Originally proposed: 2016 (Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation) Adapted to Washington: March 5, 2026 (Historical Apoplexy series, Cooper) Current revision: May 22, 2026

Filed by: _________________ [Sponsor/Proponent] Address: _________________ [Washington address required] Date: ___________________

Prepared by: Imran Stanton Cooper

Verification notes & full source chain

Constitutional path: Citizen-initiative-capable.

Distribution-model precedent: The U.S. Defense Commissary Agency (10 U.S.C. § 2484), operational since 1867, sells groceries at cost plus a five-percent maintenance surcharge with no profit allowed by law. 2.8 million authorized users, 236 stores worldwide, $4 billion annual sales, $1.3 billion federal appropriation paid by all taxpayers including the 330+ million civilians denied access. This bill extends the same at-cost distribution model to all residents of Washington.

Public-health-equity evidence: The Marmot Whitehall Studies (1967-present), Sapolsky's Serengeti baboons, Shively's cynomolgus macaques, and Blackburn's Nobel-winning telomere research establish that hierarchy itself kills across four research programmes, six decades, and three species. The gap is the gradient. Food assurance reaches beyond bare survival because the gradient damages population health even where calorie minimums are met.

Abundance arithmetic: 293,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities at 77 percent utilization; 19.5-29.3× the productive overcapacity required to provide universal abundance in consumer goods. 47.9 million Americans food-insecure; $32 billion ends domestic hunger; $496 billion is the annual U.S. food-industry markup over production cost; the gap is operational evidence of manufactured scarcity, not evidence of resource constraint. See Paper III, The Mathematics of Abundance.