News & Updates

The next (and likely final) campus legislative briefing will be held next Tuesday, March 4 from 11:00 a.m. to noon in the Regents Room in Gerberding Hall.

House and Senate budget proposals have passed their respective chambers so negotiations begin in earnest next week.  Today is the last day for policy committees to consider bills from the opposite house and fiscal committees must complete their work by Monday.  The end of session is near and by Tuesday, most legislators, staffers and lobbyists will be counting backwards from the scheduled adjournment date of March 13.

See all of you Tuesday morning.

During their executive session on the 2008 supplemental operating budget this afternoon, the Senate Ways and Means committee added $1 million to the University’s budget for the eScience Institute proposal that was part of the UW’s original supplemental budget request.  The amendment was co-sponsored by Senators Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) and Senator Brian Hatfield (D-Raymond).  Senator Ed Murray (D-Seattle) who is not on the committee also played an important role in advocating for the amendment.

The committee also added funding for a Ruckelshaus Center study related to patient safety (which was included in the House budget) and funding related to bills dealing with improving medical care for persons with developmental disabilities.

The funding for the eScience Institute comes from the state general fund, but a corresponding transfer from a state convention and trade center account was made in order to maintain the Senate’s existing general fund reserve.

The full Senate should take action on the supplemental budget tomorrow or Friday.  Negotiations on differences between the two chambers will begin next week.

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.

The House of Representatives is debating the 2008 supplemental operating budget as I post this entry.  Unfortunately for the UW and WSU Star Researchers program, an amendment sponsored by Rep. Larry Haler (R-Richland) which would have restored the $1.5 million cut out in the House budget proposal failed on a voice vote less than a half hour ago.  It appears the cut will remain and our efforts will shift to retaining the funding in the Senate budget so that the program has a chance to be fully restored in conference negotiations.

Speaking of the Senate, they are delaying the release of their 2008 operating and capital budget proposals by a day since the House budgets are being acted on this afternoon.  The Senate did release its supplemental transportation budget at noon today and we expect the Senate to unveil it’s remaining spending plans tomorrow at noon.

Governor Gregoire’s statement last week on the House budget did mention an interest in seeing the House doing more on campus safety (their budget removed virtually all of her operating and capital campus safety items) and to maintain a larger budget reserve.

My bad.  I testified yesterday in House Appropriations and praised committee members for at least protecting the base level of funding for the UW and other four year institutions.  Well, turns out I was wrong, at least for the state’s research universities.

Staff from the Higher Education Coordinating Board brought to our attention this morning a proposed reduction in budget for the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development (CTED) that will have a direct impact on funding for both the UW and WSU.  It’s a $1.5 million cut to the STAR Researcher program that was implemented in the underlying 2007-09 budget based upon legislation pushed by Sen. Jim Kastama (D-Puyallup).

A total of $2.4 million was provided in the budget last year for the state Economic Development Commission to work with the UW, WSU and the HECB on a plan to recruit entrepreneurial researchers to the state lead innovation research teams and help promote commercialization within the states’ research universities.  The UW and WSU worked on this plan during the fall and are actively recruiting the first STAR researchers for each campus.

What makes this budget cut so devastating is that the UW and WSU star researcher recruitments are actively underway.  The UW is targeting Dr. Michael Hochberg from the California Institute of Technology who is an international expert in the field of Nanophotonics.  WSU is recruiting Birgitte Kiaer Ahring, a microbiologist from the Technical University of Denmark and a renowned expert in clean technology solutions.  I am told Ms. Ahring recently was in Olympia for a meeting with Governor Gregoire.

The UW and WSU are working hard to get these funds restored to the budget, for without them, a tremendous opportunity to bring two internationally respected researchers to Washington State will be missed.

The House of Representatives released its versions of the operating, capital and transportation budgets today in Olympia.  As expected, they were pretty lean and mostly devoid of new spending initiatives for the UW and the other four year institutions.  Briefly, here is a summary of how the University fared.

OPERATING BUDGET

The House budget provides a total of $582,000 of new operating resources for the UW.  Most all of these items were not requested by the University.  They are:

• $88,000 for one new mental health counselor position.
• $100,000 to continue academic planning activities related to a UW North Sound campus.
• $125,000 for a land use study to be conducted by the Ruckelshaus Center.
• $119,000 for a patient safety study to be conducted by the Ruckelshaus Center.
• $150,000 for the Institute for the Study of the Brain (ILABS).

CAPITAL BUDGET

The House capital budget includes a total of $3.3 million in new funding for the UW for two items.  They are:

A total of $3 million for land acquisition ($2 million) and soils remediation ($1 million) for the UW Tacoma.  The University had requested a total of $7.4 million, $5.5 for land acquisition and $1.9 million for soils remediation.

• $300,000 to conduct a pre-design study for a future expansion of the Burke Museum.

A public hearing on the House operating budget was held this afternoon and the House Capital Budget committee will take public testimony tomorrow morning.  The Senate budgets are expected to be released early next week.

With a strong 95-2 vote in the House of Representatives, it seems that Rep. Fred Jarrett’s (D-Mercer Island) long-time goal of using performance agreements to link higher education funding with clearly understood accountability measures may actually be on the brink of becoming state law.

EHB 2641 would establish six-year pilot performance agreements with all of the state’s four year institutions beginning with the next biennial budget cycle.  The idea, however, is not new.  Rep. Jarrett and Rep. Skip Priest (R-Federal Way) have been championing this idea ever since the state’s last economic downturn in 2002 when they watched the state slash spending for higher education, increase tuition significantly, but not adjust any expectations for what could be reasonably be accomplished by the institutions.

Today’s Seattle Times published an editorial in favor of the legislation as it heads to the Senate and a public hearing tomorrow in the Higher Education Committee.  For those of you interested in how the performance agreement process would work, here’s a link to the current version of the bill.

Well, there are two days left for floor action on both House and Senate bills and I’m still getting plenty of inquiries on the status of the UW North Sound campus.  Last Tuesday, the Senate Ways and Means committee failed to advance ANY of the measures related to the new school that would have favored, Everett, Marysville and Lake Stevens.  HB 2548 (Dunshee) remains on the second reading calendar in the House and must be acted on by tomorrow unless it is deemed necessary to implement the budget.

Here are a couple of new viewpoints on this issue.  The first is a column written by Tacoma News Tribune columnist Dan Voepel which worries about the impact of the new college on UW Tacoma, particularly their technology institute.

The second is from Everett Herald political reporter Jerry Cornfield with his handicapping of Rep. Dunshee’s bills chances over the next 48 hours.

The much anticipated quarterly revenue forecast was released this afternoon in Olympia and as predicted for the past several weeks, it dropped.  Dr. Chang Mook Sohn, in his final meeting as chief revenue forecaster, estimates that the state will take in $423 million less for the remainder of the current biennium than predicted last November.  More than half of the expected decline is related to lower real estate excise tax collections resulting from the slowing housing market.  The remainder of the forecast adjustment is related to declining consumer confidence related to the worsening national outlook.

Dr. Sohn went to great lengths in his remarks this afternoon to stress that while a mild national recession is now expected for the first two quarters of 2008, the Washington state economy is significantly brighter than the U.S. picture and that a recession is not expected here.

As for the impact on the state budget picture, today’s drop in revenue reduces the expected size of the budget reserve from $1.4 billion to just under $1 billion, before any 2008 supplemental budget adjustments are made.  While legislative and executive fiscal experts expect the forecast to result in a significant curtailment of new general fund spending or new tax reductions, so far, no one has suggested making major changes to the underlying 2007-09 biennial spending plan.

The proposed 2008 supplemental operating budget is expected to be released one week from today on February 20th by committee chair Rep. Helen Sommers (D-Seattle).  A public hearing on that budget is now scheduled for 3:30 p.m. that afternoon in House Hearing Room A.  The 2008 House capital budget is also expected to be released next week and a public hearing on Rep. Bill Fromhold’s proposal is scheduled for next Thursday at 8:00 a.m.

Although a schedule has not been announced, it is widely speculated that the Senate operating and capital budgets will be released the following week.