WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Rep. Jim Moeller Weekly E-Newsletter – The Operating budget

Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared information with you about 2 of the 3 state budgets: The Transportation and the Capital budgets. Today I want to tell you a little about the 3rd state budget, the Operating budget.

Education - Classroom at Lincoln School in Olympia.Dec99 by Dick MilliganThe Operating budget includes funding for the general day-to-day operating expenses of state agencies, colleges and universities, and the public schools. Allotments to school districts, leases, goods and services, employee salaries and benefits, and medical assistance payments are typical operating expenses.

About half of the operating budget is financed by the state general fund with the remaining funds coming from federal and other funding sources. The major sources of revenue for the state portion are the retail sales and use tax (51%), the business and occupation tax (20%), and the state property tax (12%).

  • Funding from the Operating Budget:
  • K-12 Education – for one million students
  • Higher Education – for over 232,000 full-time enrolled students
  • Health Care – for about 1.4 million children and low income adults
  • Social Services – for children, adults and families
  • Public Safety – including prisons for more than 17,000 inmates and community supervision for over 15,000 offenders
  • Natural Resource and Recreation Programs
  • Government Operations
  • Debt Service on bonds for capital projects (including K-12 and higher education)

 A new Operating budget generally is created by making changes to the current budget. The maintenance level is the estimated cost of providing current services in the new budget period.

Once the maintenance level is estimated, the Governor and Legislature focus on policy changes to the budget. These decisions can add funding for new or expanded services/programs or reduce funding for existing programs.

While the net policy changes in a budget (policy additions and reductions combined) can be relatively small, the additions and reductions can be really significant. For example, cutting funding for food stamps, teacher’s salaries or programs for low income seniors may cause changes that really hurt local communities

Finally, after many hours of discussions, a final budget comes before the House where checkbook, calculator, budgetmembers are given the opportunity to vote the budget up or down. Unfortunately, we cannot vote for one part of the budget and against another part—we must vote for or against the budget as a whole.

As we work our way through the session, lots of discussions will take place before we come up with the final version of this budget, so keep those messages coming and please feel free to contact my office with any questions or comments.