Office of Planning & Budgeting

December 20, 2019

Governor Inslee’s Proposed 2020 Supplemental Operating and Capital Budgets

On Wednesday, Governor Jay Inslee released his proposed 2019- 21 supplemental operating and capital budgets. The budgets include corrections and technical changes to the 2019-21 biennial budgets passed in April 2019. For a detailed analysis and summary of the Governor’s proposals, or to look back at OPB’s brief on the biennial budgets, please see OPB’s briefs on this page.

Overall, the Governor’s operating budget does not make significant changes to the enacted biennial budget. The largest change in the higher education sector was a transfer of nearly $28 million to the Workforce Education Investment Account (WEIA) to ensure that the fund would not go into deficit in the 2019-21 biennium, given the forecasted caseload for the Washington College Grant. The most significant adjustments for the UW are:

  • A budget-neutral shift of allocations to provide one-time payments to eligible represented employees at the UW;
  • A significant increase to the amount that the Governor’s Office of Financial Management (OFM) will bill the University for central services charges beginning in FY21; and,

As for the capital budget, the University received $1 million for its request for predesign to study a multi-phased approach to renovate or replace portions of the Magnuson Health Sciences Center. New space will accommodate the growing demands of education space for the health sciences schools, including space for interdisciplinary innovation and collaboration.

The release of the Governor’s budget proposals represents the first step in the supplemental budget process. Lawmakers in the Senate and the House will release their own proposals throughout the upcoming 2020 legislative session, beginning on January 13.

For more information regarding the UW’s current requests for state funding, please see OPB’s 2020 operating and capital request submissions on the State Budget Information page.

Stay tuned to the OPBlog for updates during the 2020 legislative session!