The Senate released their versions of the operating and capital budgets today at a noon press conference in Olympia. For the UW, the news was much improved from what was unveiled last week in the House of Representatives.
OPERATING BUDGET
Of most importance, the Senate not only maintained funding in the underlying budget for the Star Researchers program, they also enhanced the program with an increase of $253,000. Having this funding retained will insure that both the UW and WSU are able to finalize their respective researcher recruitments which are currently in progress. If you haven’t seen it already, the Seattle Times wrote a nice editorial this morning in support of maintaining these funds.
The Senate budget also provides $500,000 for additional childcare institutional grants for students at the six public baccalaureate institutions as provided for in SB 6730.
As for the rest of the Senate operating budget, there’s not a lot to crow about. None of the University’s supplemental operating budget request items were funded, with the exception of $88,000 for one additional mental health counselor position, a component of our larger campus safety budget request. The rest of the operating enhancements are related to specific bills passed by the Senate including:
- $125,000 for the Ruckelshaus Center to conduct a land use and property rights tudy.
- $408,000 to implement the WA Trade Corps Fellowship program (SSB 5367)
- $340,000 to cover the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition for certain foreign nationals and their children who will now qualify for in-state tuition (SB 6849).
- $65,000 for the State Climatologist at the UW who is assigned additional responsibilities (SB 6308).
CAPITAL BUDGET
The Senate capital budget is essentially a carbon copy of the capital budget issued by the House last week. One UW request item was partially funded, that being the land acquisition and soils remediation request for the UW Tacoma campus. A total of $3 million is provided of the $7.4 million original request, $2 million for land acquisition and $1 million for soils remediation.
In addition, the Senate budget provides $300,000 pre-design funding for a proposed expansion of the Burke Museum.
One item that is of concern to the UW is the reduction in the capital budget cost allocation pool that was established just last year but reduced by about 50% in both the House and Senate capital budgets. The UW has a pending request before OFM of about $670,000 due to projected cost overruns on the Playhouse Theater project funded in the 2007-09 capital budget. If the cost allocation pool reduction is not changed, there would not be sufficient funds remaining for OFM to fund this pending request.
The Senate Ways and Means committee took public testimony on these budget proposals this afternoon and will consider amendments to both the operating and capital budgets at their afternoon hearing tomorrow.