REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 21
 

Now that the Legislature has moved passed Tuesday evening’s house of origin cut-off deadline, much of the legislative action returns to committee work. Legislative committees have until Feb. 29 to adopt opposite house bills. Work also continues behind-the-scenes as budget-writers in the House fine-tune their 2008 Supplemental Operating Budget proposal just released yesterday. This evening, the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take action on the budget proposal and send it to the full House. The full House is expected to act on the plan as early as tomorrow. While the House is maneuvering its budget plan through the process, they have also begun working with budget-writers in the Senate. Senate budget-writers plan on releasing their version of a 2008 Supplemental Operating Budget next week, probably on Tuesday.

Even though key budget-writers in both houses have been meeting for awhile now, it seems fairly clear that they will not be seeing eye-to-eye on many pieces of the budget. Sen. Margarita Prentice, Chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, has been quoted as saying she would like the final budget to include a larger reserve than the House budget currently provides. The House proposal includes $750 million in budget reserves — $321 million in unrestricted reserves and $429 million in the new, voter-authorized Budget Stabilization Account. When the Governor released her budget request in December, she had requested that $1.2 billion be left in reserve. With last Friday’s news that revenue collections for the remainder of the biennium are projected to be $423 million lower than estimated in November — coupled with a new caseload forecast that projected mandatory caseloads would increase by almost $100 million — most legislative observers quickly admitted that a $1.2 billion reserve was no longer realistic. A reserve somewhere between $750 million and $1 billion is likely where the Senate will land.

Another potential area for disagreement is the amount of budget reductions — and where those budget reductions come from. The House has caused some controversy by proposing to “freeze” funding for the full-day kindergarten program phase-in that the Legislature started last year. Grants supporting full-day kindergarten for the highest poverty schools (top 10 percent of poverty rates) in school year 2007-08 would be maintained in school year 2008-09; however, the scheduled phase-in to the top 20 percent high poverty schools for school year 2008-09 would be suspended indefinitely, “saving” $16.1 million.

At the time this Update was being prepared, members of the House Appropriations Committee were meeting in Democrat and Republican caucuses to discuss the many amendments that had been introduced on the House budget proposal. It is anticipated that most of the amendments will be rejected; however, we will provide information on any substantive changes to the K-12 portion of the budget in tomorrow’s Update. For specific details of the House’s 2008 Supplemental Operating Budget, please see our Feb. 20 Update and WSSDA’s next issue of Impact (which will be e-mailed to listserv subscribers tomorrow afternoon).

Return to Legislative Report Index

Legislative Reports are prepared by WSSDA's Governmental Relations staff team: Dan Steele (360/252-3010) and Sheila Chard (360/252-3011). If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us.