State Legislative News

State update for Thursday April 7, 2011

The House Ways and Means Committee last night approved a handful of amendments before moving the House operating budget proposal to the floor. Most notably for WSU was an amendment that would limit how much money the university would have to hold in reserve as a sort of performance incentive fund.  Originally, the proposal called […]

State update for Tuesday April 5, 2011

Leaders in the state House of Representatives yesterday afternoon released their proposed operating and capital budget proposals and it’s expected the Senate will soon follow with theirs. The operating budget proposal, which would close a budget shortfall of more than $5 billion mostly through major spending cuts, would cut WSU’s state appropriation by about $109 […]

State update for Tuesday March 29, 2011

It’s day 79 of this year’s legislative session and the big news of the week is still to come.  Leaders in the House of Representatives could release their budget proposal any day now.  But given the great complexity and difficulty in plugging this year’s multi-billion-dollar budget gap, this release has been delayed.  We’ll post an […]

State update for Friday March 24, 2011

One of the questions I get most often from Pullman centers around the status of the higher education regulatory reform package in the Legislature.  And it’s routinely one of the most difficult to answer. By way of background, last year our state’s universities were asked to develop a list of measures that might offer some […]

State Update for Tuesday March 22, 2011

It’s the 72nd day of this year’s 105-day legislative session and there’s much to report. Last week the state’s Economic and Revenue Forecast Council issued a new quarterly report that stretched the state’s multi-billion dollar budget gap even wider.  For the remainder of the current two-year budget cycle, which ends June 30, the report reduced […]

State update for Monday March 14, 2011

It’s the 64th legislative day and it kicks off a week that followers of the legislative process have been awaiting – if not eagerly. At noon on Thursday the state’s Economic and Revenue Forecast Council is scheduled to release its latest quarterly forecast of state tax collections. It’s this report that legislators will use to […]