Legislature agrees on operating budget for 2023–2025 and sends it to Governor Inslee

The Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­ate vot­ed in quick suc­ces­sion to approve a final oper­at­ing bud­get for the upcom­ing bien­ni­um this after­noon, com­plet­ing the essen­tial work of the 2023 leg­isla­tive ses­sion and putting the bud­get into Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s hands for exec­u­tive action.

ESSB 5187 is the vehi­cle for this year’s oper­at­ing bud­get. Its title is mak­ing 2023–2025 fis­cal bien­ni­um oper­at­ing appro­pri­a­tions. It is prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Chris­tine Rolfes (D‑23rd Dis­trict: Kit­sap Penin­su­la), the Chair of the Ways & Means Com­mit­tee, which has bud­get writ­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty in the Senate.

The House vot­ed along par­ty lines to approve the con­fer­ence report (the nego­ti­at­ed final ver­sion that was cre­at­ed out of the pre­vi­ous ver­sions adopt­ed by both cham­bers) while the Sen­ate saw a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty vote yes.

The final oper­at­ing bud­get (pri­or to exec­u­tive action) is 1,403 pages long and con­sists of 1,906 sec­tions. It does not incor­po­rate any new pro­gres­sive tax reform to bal­ance our tax code (like a wealth tax) nor does it pro­vide what NPI believes would be an appro­pri­ate lev­el of fund­ing for our K‑12 schools. School dis­tricts will thus be forced to make some very destruc­tive cuts in the weeks to come.

Nev­er­the­less, there are some impor­tant pieces with­in the bud­get that we advo­cat­ed for, like fund­ing for the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources to con­tin­ue assess­ing the seis­mic risks of our state’s school buildings:

Sec­tion 310, sub­sec­tion 37: 300,000 of the gen­er­al fund—state appro­pri­a­tion for fis­cal year 2024 and $300,000 of the gen­er­al fund — state appro­pri­a­tion for fis­cal year 2025 are pro­vid­ed sole­ly for the depart­ment to con­tin­ue the work spec­i­fied in sec­tion 3291, chap­ter 413, Laws of 2019 to assess pub­lic school seis­mic safe­ty for school build­ings not yet assessed, focused on high­est risk areas of the state as a priority.

The roll call vote in the House was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5187
Oper­at­ing budget
Final Pas­sage as rec­om­mend­ed by the Con­fer­ence Committee
4/23/2023

Yeas: 58; Nays: 40

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alvara­do, Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Bronoske, Callan, Chap­man, Chopp, Cortes, Davis, Doglio, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Fari­var, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Hansen, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Macri, Mena, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Reed, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Rule, Ryu, San­tos, Senn, Shavers, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stearns, Stonier, Street, Tay­lor, Thai, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Walen, Wylie, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Barnard, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Cheney, Chris­t­ian, Con­nors, Cor­ry, Cou­ture, Dent, Dye, Eslick, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hutchins, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Kretz, Low, May­cum­ber, McClin­tock, McEn­tire, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Robert­son, Rude, San­dlin, Schmick, Schmidt, Steele, Stokes­bary, Volz, Walsh, Waters, Wilcox, Ybarra

As men­tioned, it was a par­ty-line vote.

In the Sen­ate, the roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5187
Oper­at­ing budget
Final Pas­sage as Rec­om­mend­ed by Con­fer­ence Committee
4/23/2023

Yeas: 37; Nays: 12

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Braun, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Frame, Gildon, Hasegawa, Holy, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, King, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, MacEwen, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Nguyen, Nobles, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rivers, Robin­son, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Shew­make, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Valdez, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Boehnke, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Hawkins, McCune, Pad­den, Schoesler, Short, Tor­res, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Jeff)

All Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors vot­ed yea. Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who crossed over to sup­port the bud­get were John Braun, the minor­i­ty leader, Chris Gildon, Jeff Holy, Cur­tis King, Drew MacEwen, Ron Muz­za­ll, Ann Rivers, and Lyn­da Wilson.

For­mer minor­i­ty leader Mark Schoesler denounced the bud­get in fair­ly harsh terms in a ram­bling speech pri­or to the adop­tion of the con­fer­ence report.

Sen­a­tor Lyn­da Wil­son, the rank­ing mem­ber of the Ways & Means Com­mit­tee, struck a very dif­fer­ent tone. She expressed regret that the final bud­get was not more like the ver­sion the Sen­ate passed a few weeks ago, but nev­er­the­less pledged her sup­port, express­ing sat­is­fac­tion over the lack of new revenue.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Chris­tine Rolfes, June Robin­son, Mark Mul­let, Joe Nguyen, and Pat­ty Kud­er­er all offered speech­es in sup­port of the budget.

ESSB 5187 now goes to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

The 2023 leg­isla­tive ses­sion is slat­ed to adjourn Sine Die in a few hours.