This afternoon the Senate Ways & Means committee met and took executive action to advance a proposed biennial capital budget to the Senate floor.
The Senate’s proposed capital budget now moves to the floor for further consideration.
This afternoon the Senate Ways & Means committee met and took executive action to advance a proposed biennial capital budget to the Senate floor.
The Senate’s proposed capital budget now moves to the floor for further consideration.
This afternoon Evergreen testified in support of the Senate’s proposed biennial capital budget.
The Senate’s capital budget provides funding for several projects across higher education. This includes funding for three projects at Evergreen – Lecture Hall Renovation Construction, Lab I Basement Construction funding, and Seminar I Renovation Predesign. The budget also provides authorization to purchase the Tacoma Campus property.
In addition the budget includes funds to support facilities preservation, minor works, and preventative facility maintenance and building system repairs.
Overall the budget supports Evergreen’s focus and commitment to responsible stewardship of our public facilities and infrastructure to meet current technological needs and demands, and to provide the needed facilities and infrastructure to provide a quality educational experience for students.
The Senate Ways & Means committee will take executive action on the budget tomorrow afternoon in Committee.
This morning the Washington Senate released a proposed biennial capital budget for higher education. The Senate’s capital budget provides funding for several projects across higher education, authorizing $923.7 million ($558.7 million state bonds) in higher education facilities in the next biennium.
The Senate capital budget provides funding for three key projects at Evergreen – Lecture Hall Renovation Construction, Lab I Basement Construction funding, and Seminar I Renovation Predesign. The budget also provides authorization to purchase the Tacoma Campus property.
In addition the budget includes funds to support facilities preservation, minor works, and preventative facility maintenance and building system repairs.
Next Steps
The Senate Ways & Means Committee will hold a public hearing on the proposed capital budget this afternoon with action scheduled to move the budget to the Senate floor on tomorrow afternoon.
All policy bills in fiscal committees must move from committee to the floor by the end of today (April 7).
The fiscal committees in both chambers spent long hours yesterday taking testimony on over sixty bills combined. Today both committees will hold a brief public hearing and then spend the remainder of the day advancing bills from committee to the floor.
A handful of higher education policy bills are on the list to advance to the next step. Many more have already moved directly from the policy committees to the floor. Bills that are expected to advance from fiscal committee to the floor today include:
Last night the Senate Ways & Means committee took executive action to advance a proposed biennial operating budget to the Senate floor.
The committee passed a substitute bill which mostly made technical changes to the original bill. The substitute includes a technical change to reporting language for Evergreen. The original language included reference to engineering, a program that the College does not offer. The substitute reflects this change and focuses the reporting language on computer science. A correction Evergreen highlighted in testimony.
The Senate’s proposed operating budget now moves to the floor for further consideration.
The Washington Senate is scheduled to release a proposed biennial operating budget tomorrow, March 31 at noon.
The Senate Ways & Means Committee will hold a public hearing on the proposed operating budget at 3:30 the same day.
Next week the House and Senate will continue to advance policy legislation forward in the process. Both chambers have until April 1 to advance policy bills to either a fiscal committee or the floor of the opposite chamber.
The House and Senate Higher Education committees will each meet once to take final action on any policy legislation this session.
In addition, the House Capital Budget is scheduled for a public hearing on the House’s proposed biennial capital budget on Monday followed by an executive session on the budget on Tuesday.
It is expected that the Senate will release its budget proposals either sometime next week or early in the week after.
Finally between policy deadlines and budget news, the House and Senate fiscal committees will begin the long work of advancing bills to the floor. Both chamber must move all bills to the floor in the opposite chamber by April 7, unless the legislation is deemed necessary to implement the budget.
Today the Legislature met and passed another major deadline on the way to adjournment. All bills that were referred to a fiscal committee must have advanced from committee to the floor to be considered still in play.
There are a handful of bills that are deemed necessary to implement the budget that will be in play until the end, but for the majority of policy bills today was do or die.
Both the Senate and House fiscal committees held brief public hearings to advance a handful of bills to the next step in the process before the deadline this evening. The majority of time by both committees was spent taking action on the long list of bills that have been in front of the committees all week.
The Senate Ways & Means committee did not take action on any higher education bills related to the public, four-year institutions today. The House Appropriations advanced only a few, including legislation to remove tuition-setting authority from higher education institutions (HB 1696), align state residency laws for veterans with federal law (HB 1825), and creating a pilot project on performance-based scholarships in the State Need Grant program (HB 2041).
Next week the Senate and House will spend time on their respective floors to advance legislation from one chamber to the other chamber for further consideration. Bills must have moved from their respective floors to the other chamber by the end of day on March 11.
Today the Senate and House appropriation committees held marathon sessions. Both committees continued public hearings on legislation and began the hard work of deciding what bills to advance to the floor.
The House began early this morning with a schedule to hear public testimony on thirty separate bills, followed by a long list of bills to be considered for executive action.
Among the bills the committee heard public testimony were: HB 1696 which returns tuition-setting authority for resident undergraduate students to the operating budget, HB 1812 which would require WSAC to design and implement a program that provides information to high-achieving, low-income high school studetns to increase applications from these students to public and independent, non-profit baccalaureate institutions in Washington, and HB 2041 which establishes a performance based pilot project within the State Need Grant program.
The House finished a long day by moving a handful of higher education related bills to the floor. Among those bills advanced to the next stage was legislation to enhance public safety and reduce recidivism through postsecondary education (HB 1704), and legislation that amends the definition of resident student to comply with federal requirements established by the veterans access, choice, and accountability act of 2014 (HB 1825).
While the Senate Ways & Means Committee heard only a few bills this afternoon, the majority of their time was spent advancing bills to the floor.
The Senate moved several higher education related bills:
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.