The fourth week of session will be heavily dictated by cut-off deadlines for policy committees. All House policy committees (i.e. House Higher Education) must move any House bills out of committee by February 2. All Senate policy committees (i.e. Senate Higher Education & Workforce Development) must move any Senate bills out of committee by February 5.

This week the focus of the higher education policy committees (i.e. House Higher Education and Senate Higher Education & Workforce Development) will be to move several bills impacting Washington’s institutions of higher education out of committee and either to the floor for consideration or to an appropriation committee. Any bill that may have a fiscal impact must go through an appropriations committee once it passes out of a policy committee.

Both the House and Senate higher education committees will look to move legislation that focuses on issues, such as performance agreements, system design, teacher preparation, tuition policy, three-year degree, and financial aid.

In addition, the appropriations committees (i.e. Senate Ways & Means and House Ways & Means) will meet to continue their work on budget related matters.

The workload will shift for a time from the policy committees to the appropriation committees as the cut-off date for policy bills passes this coming week and the cut-off date for appropriation bills looms the following week.