Democratic budget writers are done hashing out details on a new two-year operating budget for Washington state, key lawmakers said Wednesday.
“We have made all the decisions, but there’s still a lot of pieces that have to fall into place,” said Sen. June Robinson, D-Everett, chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee and chief architect of the Senate operating budget proposal.
She said specifics may not be available until Friday at the earliest. Senate leaders have said their goal is to release their operating budget by Saturday morning and vote on Sunday, the last scheduled day of session.
Robinson is one of four Democrats on the conference committee reconciling differences between the Senate and House spending plans. Two Republican lawmakers on the panel have not been at the table for negotiations.
There are all the signs of a deal on a new capital budget as well.
“We’re done with the numbers. This evening, we will finalize the language,” Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Port Townsend, chair of the House Capital Budget Committee, told the Heritage Caucus early Wednesday morning. The group is made up of lawmakers, state agency staff, and nonprofit leaders, and works on public policy to promote heritage, arts, and science in the state.
Tharinger also had good news on the larger operating budget.
“My understanding,” he said, is that negotiators are, “as they say, ‘pencils down’ and they’re done with their work.”
But, he cautioned, it is a very tight budget. They may need to adjust numbers if there are changes made to the revenue-raising bills getting voted on in the next couple of days.
After hearing Tharinger, Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, a Heritage Caucus member, said it is “kind of good news about the pencils down.”
She confirmed the potential need to rejigger numbers, citing the number of budget-related bills moving through the process.
Two of those – House Bill 2081 and Senate Bill 5814 – are counted on to raise several billion dollars for the two-year budget that begins July 1.
Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, said that while there is “every indication they finished negotiations,” what happens to the revenue bills is the wild card that could cause the budget to “go off the tracks.”
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