State update for Friday April 15, 2011

The House Ways and Means Committee last night moved out a bill that would grant Washington’s public universities tuition setting authority for four years.

House Bill 1795 was advanced on a 22-5 vote and now heads for a vote of the full House of Representatives. It’s lengthy, complicated and very much a work in progress.  For now, the bill would allow universities to set tuition rates up to the amount authorized in the budget without incurring any new financial aid obligations.  Were universities to use its tuition setting authority to exceed that threshold, the current 3.5 percent holdback for all tuition revenues would increase to 5 percent to provide additional financial aid dollars for low and middle income students.

Beginning in 2015, tuition rates would be indexed to rates seen in Global Challenge States.  The bill also includes new performance and accountability language.  And there are other details in the bill that need to get cleaned up.

If anything seems certain, it’s that this bill is not in its final form.

UPDATE: The WSU Budget Office has posted this summary of the Senate budget proposal and this side-by-side comparison of the budgets proposed by the Governor, House and Senate.