Sunday marked Day 150 of the legislative session. A deal on the 2015-17 operating budget had yet to emerge and the only thing anyone could say for sure is the 2015 session can’t go for more than another 200 days. Because after that it will be 2016.
OK, not that funny, but it passes for humor in Olympia, where legislative leaders meet behind closed doors with each other, the governor, and a few people with intimate knowledge of the way the state raises and spends money. Reporters have been trying to divine tidbits of information about the progress of budget talks from monosyllabic answers legislators give to questions going in or out of negotiations, or the fact that they don’t answer, or their facial expressions, or the fact that they duck out a back door of the conference room so we can’t see their facial expressions. But to convince the editors that we are not spending these nice summer days paddling a kayak around the South Puget Sound, we offer some answers to common questions about the budget discussions as they stand.
Why do you keep writing about “the budget”? Aren’t there several budgets?
That’s correct. The state’s transportation budget, which uses gasoline taxes and other revenue connected to motor vehicles and transportation for roads, bridges and mass transit, has already passed. There’s also a capital budget, which it uses for large and small building projects, and a second transportation budget that could be used for new projects if a new gasoline tax is passed. The operating budget, sometimes called the general fund, which pays for most of the other programs, projects, and state salaries and benefits, is the biggest and the focus of all the negotiations.
How big is it?
In February and May, economists said the recovery was going so well that there would be more revenue, and the current figure is about $36.6 billion. Both sides want to do good things with that money, although not necessarily the same good things. Senate Republicans have a budget with about $37.9 billion in spending, and House Democrats have one that’s about $38.4 billion.
