This afternoon the Senate Ways & Means Committee advanced several bills to the Senate floor. Today marked the deadline for all bills before the appropriation committees to be advanced to either the Senate or House floor.

The Committee advanced three higher education related bill.

• SB 6042 would establish an incentive funding framework for Washington’s public baccalaureate institutions. A substitute was passed out of committee that made several changes to the bill including clarifications with regard to funding and metrics as well as repeal of former performance related reporting requirements.
• SB 6362  would implement greater efficiencies for the public, baccalaureate institutions. The legislation would make changes to business practices resulting in greater efficiency and effectiveness for Washington’s public baccalaureate institutions. A substitute was passed out of committee that removed language to allow the pre-design threshold to increase from $5 million to $10 million.
• SB 6482 would add the branch campuses to the display of campus information on the statewide public four-year dashboard.