Published date: April 16, 2025
The 2025 regular session is almost done with only 2 weeks to go. This week, Wednesday, the Legislature will reach the next session deadline, Opposite House Cutoff. That is the last day to consider opposite house bills, except for matters necessary to implement the budgets, matters that affect state revenue, or amendments, differences and business related to the interim or closing the session.
Budget negotiations are ongoing, and the latest rumors are that the transportation budget negotiators have been given the “number” by legislative leadership that they must negotiate under. The Senate and House transportation budgets proposals had differing revenue numbers: the House crafted a budget with about $4,436M in revenue (over 6 years), while the Senate transportation budget was based on $3,040M in new revenue over 6 years, the transfer of the fish passage obligation to the capital budget and a transfer of 3-tenths sales and use tax from the general fund to the multimodal account (SB 5802). While both relied on gas tax increases and increased sales tax of luxury vehicles, the amounts they raised differed. Hence, they needed a “number” so they knew how big they could build the negotiated budget.
The capital budgets are similarly working under different numbers: the Senate capital budget, as mentioned earlier, has the entire fish passage obligation to address. SB 5804 would help by using utility taxes currently funding the public works assistance account to fund $5 billion in bonds to pay for culvert replacements. Whether the House is willing to adopt that approach is unknown, however, there is opposition to SB 5804., which currently sits in the Senate Rules Committee.
The operating budget negotiations are shrouded in rumors: they have a budget number, or they have a revenue number or they ……are still pondering that after the Governor announced he would not sign a budget based on a wealth tax. See: Search is on in Washington Legislature for new tax options
With only 13 days to go, they need to decide by April 27th, the end of the regular session, or they could be starting a special session as early as April 28th.