Over the past week, the Senate and House released their draft 2023-25 operating and capital budgets. The state’s operating budget pays for the day-to-day operations of state government, while the capital budget is used to acquire, build, and maintain state facilities. The legislative leaders of the Senate Ways & Means Committee and the House Appropriations and Capital Budget Committees are charged with crafting the budget proposals. After they’re passed in committee, the budgets move to their respective floors for consideration by the entire chamber.
Investments for the UW in the operating budgets include:
- $30.4M (Senate & House) for nonrepresented employee compensation increases of 4% in fiscal year 2024 and 3% in FY25
- $6.5M (Senate & House) for state approved CBAs for represented employees
- $22.8M (Senate) I $17.3M (House) to improve the state portion of the compensation fund split. The Senate’s budget improves the fund split to 66% state funding and the House improves it to 60% state funding
- $10.58M (Senate) I $8.45M (House) to grow a local, more diverse STEM workforce at all three UW campuses:
- $6M (Senate) I $4M (House) for the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering to increase enrollment, and $250,000 (House) in one-time money for the Startup program
- $1.7M (House & Senate) for the UW Bothell School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics to develop a program modeled after STARS to support 75 pre-major students in accessing and graduating with computer science degrees, and $362,000 (House) in additional support for the STARS program in Seattle
- $2.85M (Senate) I $2.14M (House) for the UW Tacoma School of Engineering & Technology to increase enrollment
- $2.3M (House) to expand the UW School of Dentistry RIDE program, which trains dentists to meet the needs of rural and underserved populations
- $4.33M (House) for student support services at UW Tacoma
- $8.5M (Senate) I $2.9M (House) in maintenance and operations (M&O) for UW Bothell’s STEM4 building, the UW Interdisciplinary Engineering Building, and the Behavioral Health Teaching Facility. The BHTF was not funded in the House.
- $25.83M (Senate) shift in M&O funds back to the operating budget, which frees up a commensurate amount in the UW Building Account for critical building renewal and deferred maintenance
- $3M (House) to develop a clean energy transformation strategy that transitions the Seattle campus energy infrastructure to 100% clean energy
Investments for UW Medicine include:
- $150M (Senate) I $100M (House) in one-time funding for UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center so they can continue serving as the state’s safety-net and workforce training hospitals
- $6.6M (Senate) I $4.9M (House) in one-time funding for the Behavioral Health Teaching Facility for physician support and facilities fees
- $2M (Senate & House) for the Family Medicine Residency Network, which trains high quality family medicine physicians in the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) region
- $1M (Senate & House) to continue firearm injury research
- $1M (Senate) to create a UW Center for Indigenous Health
The Senate has already passed their operating budget off the floor and the House will consider theirs in the coming days.
On Monday, the House also released their capital budget proposal with $58M for phase 2 of the Magnuson Health Sciences Center renovation and $7.7M for land acquisition at UW Tacoma to accommodate future growth. Unfortunately, the proposal did not include funding for Anderson Hall, wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House, Chemical Sciences, the behavioral health renovation of UW Medical Center-Northwest, and the Clean Energy testbeds, all of which were included in the Governor and Senate budget proposals. The Senate unveiled their capital budget last week.
The House and Senate will now work toward final compromise budgets, which must be voted on by the last day of session scheduled for April 23.
For a more detailed overview of the House and Senate budget proposals, see the UW Office of Planning and Budgeting’s briefs page.