Yesterday, we offered a roundup of news coverage of the Senate budget plan. Today, we have some analysis and commentary from two statewide policy research groups.
Washington Policy Center analyst Jason Mercier writes,
Yesterday the Senate released its proposed $43 billion spending plan ($85.8 billion all funds). This represents approximately a 13% increase in spending from the current budget. For comparison, the 2015-17 budget increased spending by roughly 14%. The Senate Ways & Means Committee released this summary of the proposal. Full budget details are available here. As for the high level parts of the Senate budget, here are the details provided by the Senate majority party.
Among those provisions receiving the most attention are the proposed property tax changes to fund McCleary and the decision to reject the state employee compensation increases made in secret with the Governor.
Emily Makings, with the Washington Research Council, comments here and here, She examines categorical spending changes, noting
…the spending increases are concentrated in public schools. NGFS+ spending on public schools would increase by 20.6 percent over 2015–17, while spending on everything else would increase by 5.3 percent. Spending on public schools would make up 50.7 percent of the NGFS+ budget.
The Senate is expected to pass the bill later this week, possibly as early as this evening.
