Office of Planning & Budgeting

April 12, 2011

State House of Reps Passes Operating Budget Saturday

After considering numerous floor amendments last Friday evening, the House passed their operating budget on Saturday afternoon. The House budget appropriates $32.2 billion in general fund state operating funds and makes significant cuts to health and human services, K-12 education, and higher education.

Like the House Ways & Means chair budget, the engrossed budget cuts $204 million from the UW’s state general fund appropriation over two fiscal years. However, that reduction is somewhat mitigated by the fact that all UW units took part of these cuts in November 2010 permanently. As a result, our brief outlined the approximate cut (before tuition revenue) that would be implemented in Seattle should the House budget ultimately pass after negotiations between the chambers.

The engrossed budget contained an extremely important amendment which exempts university and college employees from individual salary reductions of 3%. However, institutions will still need to come up with requisite “savings” (read: cuts) of 3% from all appropriated funds, which for the UW, are general fund state and the medical aid and accident accounts.

The Senate is expected to release operating and capital budgets this evening. After the Senate passes its budget, leadership in each chamber will begin negotiations toward a conference budget.