Office of Planning & Budgeting

April 6, 2012

No Material Change to UW Funding in New House Budget

In a final effort to pass an omnibus operating budget before the end of the first special session of 2012, the House introduced what the Democratic Caucus deemed a compromise, amended budget Wednesday and passed the budget off the floor yesterday. This second engrossed House budget is nearly identical to the first engrossed House budget in its treatment of higher education institutions.

As a reminder, an engrossed budget must be adopted by the opposite chamber before it is sent to the Governor. If the opposite chamber amends the budget, the budget is returned to the house of origin for concurrence or further amendments.

What remains to be seen is whether the Senate will hear the House budget before Tuesday (which marks the end of the first special session of 2012) and either amend it or pass it. This appears unlikely by most accounts.

For the UW, the second (newly) engrossed House budget and the most recent Senate “philosophical coalition” budget are mostly identical. Both budgets make no NEW service cuts to higher education. The House budget, like the Senate budget, contains a number of central agency service reductions for specific “state” services that would have some impact on the UW, and both budgets redirect existing state appropriations to the UW to fund specific initiatives in the College of Engineering ($3.8 million), WWAMI ($210,000) and RIDE ($190,000).

The primary difference between the two approaches is that the second engrossed House budget does not swap $5 million of state funds for $5 million of State Toxics Control funds in the College of the Environment’s budget.

Planning & Budgeting continues to develop drafts of the FY13 UW capital budget, operating budget, and tuition item for Regental consideration on May 3. If we do not have a firm state appropriation figure to include by that time, our ability to accurately project central educational operating resource budgets will compromised.