Looking Ahead: Revenue Forecast, Budgets, and Negotiation

Today is Day 65 of the 2017 Regular Legislative Session. 40 more days to go!

Since our last post, we have now passed House of Origin cutoff and returned back to committee work. This means that for a bill to still be alive, it must have passed off the floor in the chamber that it was introduced in. At this point in the session, the House has begun hearing Senate bills and vice versa.

This Thursday, we will see the March revenue forecast—which is the final piece of information legislators are waiting on to finish their budgets. With that, here’s what we expect for the next couple of weeks to look like:

• Week of March 20: Senate releases operating and capital budgets
• March 29: Opposite house policy cutoff
• Week of March 27 or April 3: House releases operating and capital budgets
• April 4: Opposite house fiscal cutoff
• April 23: Final day of the 2017 regular session

If there is no agreement on a budget as of April 23, we expect that the Governor will immediately call a special 30-day session.

As a reminder, EWU’s priority ask this year is funding for the construction of the Interdisciplinary Science Center. In addition to those capital funds, we are seeking additional operating dollars for faculty and staff compensation, STEM expansion, student success, and teacher preparation–among other things.

Stay tuned here for budget information and analysis as it relates to EWU. Things will move fast over the next two weeks and we will do our best to share information about the impacts of each of the budget proposals.

As always, feel free to contact David at dburi@ewu.edu if you have any questions.