An agreement announced today on the state’s 2024 supplemental operating budget provides partial one-time funding for a collective bargaining contract WSU agreed to with academic student employees, the university’s top priority. The separate capital budget agreement announced Tuesday includes funds for Climate Commitment Act compliance and deferred maintenance.
Both budgets are expected to be taken up by the House and Senate and sent to the governor’s desk in time for the Legislature to adjourn its 60-day session tomorrow.
The operating budget most notably includes $2.5 million of the $4.873 million requested by WSU to implement terms of a first-ever collective bargaining agreement reached with academic student employees. The funding provided covers only fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The budget agreement provides $6.8 million of $19 million in one-time Climate Commitment Act revenues requested by WSU to participate in carbon allowance auctions to comply with the new cap and invest decarbonization law. The budget agreement does not fund the university’s request to establish a major in supply chain management in Vancouver and Everett.
The budget agreement also funds the following items for WSU at the request of legislators:
- $500,000 in one-time funds to expand the WSU Native Coug Scholars financial aid program.
- $425,000 in one-time funds requested by the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board for WSU to inform the design and development of a state digital literacy credential program.
- $353,000 in ongoing funds to enhance the WSU Complex Social Interactions Lab on the Pullman campus.
- $190,000 in ongoing funds for a broadband coordinator within WSU Extension.
- $232,000 in ongoing funds is provided to implement House Bill 2112 concerning opioid prevention.
- $62,000 in ongoing funds is provided to better fund last year’s legislation providing benefits navigators for students.
- One-time funds also are provided to fund reports and studies pertaining to affordable housing in tourism dependent communities, municipal water conservation, and the Ruckelshaus Center’s work on the jail modernization task force.
Flattening tax collections produced a budget agreement that was more typical of traditional supplemental budgets, designed to make mid-course corrections to the underlying two-year budget approved in odd-numbered years.
Budget leaders in the House and Senate also rolled out a capital budget agreement that provides $3 million for WSU to plan for the billion-plus dollar effort to reach full compliance with the CCA. As a regulated entity under the law, the Pullman campus will need to replace two natural gas fired steam plants as its primary heating source, along with retrofitting heating infrastructure. The capital budget also provides $10 million for a new dairy digester and $1 million for minor work preservation efforts to reduce deferred maintenance backlogs.