����԰��Ƶ

The final week of this year’s legislative session is about to come to a close. The last day is Sunday, April 25 and we are all anxiously awaiting final budget details. Earlier this week, there was a “handshake deal” between the House and the Senate on the operating budget. The staff has been working for the past few days to put the final bill together. It should be released on Saturday. It is usually the last bill passed before the Legislature adjourns.

The focus was on floor action this week as legislators either agreed with changes made to bills in the opposite house (concurrence) or worked to resolve their differences. Several bills are still waiting on the final agreement and, of course, final behind-the-scenes budget negotiations are ongoing. Legislators are tackling a lot of big issues this session – from police reform to transportation to climate change, housing, and more. If you’re interested in some really good nonpartisan independent news about politics and policy in our state, check out the Washington State Wire.

It was a busy week of floor action in both the House and the Senate. There were several late-night sessions and the Legislature will be busy all weekend as lawmakers and staff work to pass any remaining bills out of the opposite house before cutoff on Sunday, April 11, at 5 pm. Any remaining bills or matters that are “necessary to implement budgets, differences between the houses, and matters incident to the interim and closing of the session” will continue to be addressed up until the final day (sine die) of this year’s session which is expected to be Sunday, April 25.

This week marked a significant shift to budget discussions. Both houses released and started amending their supplemental budgets for 2021, operating budgets for 2021-23, capital budgets, and transportation budgets. Today is the deadline for fiscal committees to pass bills and read them into the record on the floor from both House and Senate fiscal committees. Ensuring that policy bills with fiscal notes kept moving, in addition to combing through and providing initial feedback on all of these budgets, has made for a very busy week for everyone.

It was a busy, busy week in the Legislature with committees having to pass policy bills out by today, Friday, March 26. Several bills were changed significantly by the opposite house, particularly SB 5044 – related to professional learning on topics of equity and cultural competency – and SB 5265, which creates a bridge year program for an additional year of high school. In addition to work on policy bills, both the Senate and the House released their operating, supplemental, capital, and transportation budgets. Next week will be busy as fiscal committees have to meet the deadline of Friday, April 2 to pass bills out of these committees.