Washington Passes Supplemental Budget

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PHOENIX - Washington's state legislature has adjourned after passing a supplemental budget that makes modest adjustments to the state's previous two-year budget but again takes money from an account used to help fund municipal finance deals.

Lawmakers adjourned after passing the bill in special session Tuesday after failing to get a supplemental budget done during the regular session that ended earlier this year.

The supplemental budget adds nearly $200 million of new appropriations for the current budget, which covers the state until June 30, 2017. It includes new spending for homelessness relief, K-12 educator salaries, and wildfire damage relief.

"Legislators today concluded their most important order of business — passing a supplemental budget that keeps our books balanced and our state agencies fully open for business to serve the people of Washington," said Gov. Jay Inslee. "I appreciate the work of Senate and House budget negotiators to reach a good compromise that legislators were able to support on a bipartisan basis. We'll have more work to do next year on education, mental health and teacher recruitment. But supplemental budgets are largely about modest adjustments and updates to the two-year budget, and that's exactly what legislators accomplished."

There had been some significant disagreement between Democrats and Republicans in how much to spend on those programs, and neither party is reliably able to muster majorities in either chamber because the legislative membership is very nearly equally split between them. The deal again takes millions from the Public Works Trust Fund, a state-capitalized infrastructure bank in existence since the mid-1980s that has traditionally offered market access at low interest rates to small municipalities, but essentially stopped lending in recent years as state lawmakers have taken money from it.

"We are surprised and disappointed that the supplemental operating budget goes well beyond small tweaks to the state's two-year budget," said Peter B. King, Association of Washington counties chief executive officer. "Many important city revenues and programs were on the table, yet again. This cycle illustrates that the Legislature still needs to find long-term and sustainable state budget solutions that do not threaten the wellbeing of their partners at the local level. While the state's final budget deal funds many services that are beneficial to cities and towns, it does so at the expense of programs that have supported local infrastructure investments for decades."

Washington lawmakers are expected to make more drastic tweaks to state spending next session when they will take up a new full biennial budget.

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