Sen. Paull Shin (D-Edmonds) the chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee today endorsed the Pacific Station site in Everett as his preferred location for a new UW North Sound branch campus. In a news release sent out earlier this afternoon, Shin cited the recently completed NBBJ site selection study report which gave the highest… Read More

Obviously, one of the major higher education issues during the 2008 legislative session will be whether or not to officially create a new UW branch campus in Snohomish County and just where that campus might be located. Things have been pretty quiet on the UW North Sound front since the Governor’s budget was released in… Read More

With the beginning of the 2008 legislative session just one week from today, the first State Relations Legislative Update Briefing will be held this Friday, January 11 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Gerberding 142.  Topics to be covered include a session preview as well as a summary of the University’s 2008 budget and… Read More

Happy New Year UW state relations blog readers!  Hope all of you had a restful and enjoyable holiday. Here’s a story from this morning’s Vancouver Columbian in which Rep. Bill Fromhold (D-Vancouver) announces he will not seek re-election to his 49th district seat next fall.  He plans to become the executive director of the Mentoring Advanced Placement (MAP)… Read More

The Capitol Update Blog is going to take a break over the winter holidays.  Hope all of you have a peaceful and happy holiday season.  We’ll be back at it on January 2nd.

I’ve now had a chance to examine the Governor’s 2008 supplemental budget in a bit more detail, helped along quite a bit by a detailed breakdown of her spending plan prepared by the staff of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. This analysis looks not only at state general fund spending, but what budget analysts in Olympia… Read More

We have talked about the challenges the University faces when it comes to dealing with a multi-million backlog of capital facilities projects and the difficulties faced by legislators in putting all the pieces together in the state capital budget.  The piece below is part of a regular communication which UW Foundation leaders Orin Smith, Dan… Read More

Governor Gregoire released her 2008 supplemental budget proposal this morning in Olympia.  The $144 million general fund spending proposal includes a “net” total of $99 million in what she terms “required spending items” such as caseloads, litigation, federal requirements, a one-time $105 million savings in health care benefit costs (see below) and other unavoidable costs. The supplemental budget also calls… Read More

In his successful campaign for Governor last year, Eliot Spitzer asked why New York did not have a “Berkeley of the East” and said he wanted New York’s public colleges to be among the finest in the nation.  Spitzer’s remark lead to the creation of a 30-member State Commission on Higher Education which releases its… Read More

Public radio reporter Austin Jenkins wrote this story for Crosscut.com yesterday about what has been a hot topic in the Olympia rumor mill for a number of weeks — will Rep. Helen Sommers (D-Seattle) run for re-election in 2008? Sommers, who is 75 is the chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and a longtime friend… Read More