The University of Washington Tacoma would get $34 million to turn the downtown Joy Building into classrooms and office space if the Senate version of a two-year state building budget prevails – but not if lawmakers adopt the House version.
The Senate capital budget proposal includes funding for UWT as part of a $3.3 billion spending plan for 2009-11. The Senate also includes $7.5 million to move prison industry programs now at McNeil Island Corrections Center to other prisons so the McNeil facility can be shut down in mid-2010 and its 1,300 inmates transferred elsewhere. The House capital budget proposal includes neither of those provisions – first, because House budget writers chose to spend money on different projects; second, because the House isn’t planning on closing the McNeil prison.
Both capital budgets were released Wednesday.
Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget also contains $34 million for the UW Tacoma project.
Sen. Karen Fraser, D-Olympia, chairwoman of the Senate capital budget subcommittee, said the overall budget is slimmer than in past years. One reason is declining tax collections, which establish a limit on how much the state can borrow, she said.
However, the main reason is that Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate are taking between $750 million and $800 million from capital budget funds and shifting to money to help plug a projected $9 billion hole in the operations budget.
Even so, buildings is the “happy” part of the state budget this session because it hasn’t been hit as hard as the operating budget, Fraser said.
Rep. Judy Warnick of Moses Lake, top Republican on the House Capital Budget committee, took her Democratic colleagues to task for taking money from construction projects.
“The operating budget proposal would transfer $780 million of designated fund accounts normally used by the capital budget to fill part of the massive hole in the operating budget,” Warnick said. “Raiding these funds is not a wise use of our resources.”
Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, chairman of the House Capital Budget Committee, said the House version is about $120 million smaller than the Senate’s. That’s because the Senate got some money from a transportation account and chose to spend it on school and college buildings, and the House is using that same money to build ferries and repair ferry terminals, he said.
One of the single biggest casualties of the money transfers is the Public Works Trust Fund. That program ordinarily would lend about $400 million to cities, counties and water, sewer and other taxing districts at interest rates as low as 0.5 percent, and let them pay it back over 10 years. Both the House and the Senate plan to grab $365 million this year to spend on health care, public schools and prisons, and then use federal funds and borrowed money to backfill only a portion of those projects, about 60 percent.
Local governments will have to apply for money for their projects, but the money they do get over the next two years will be grants – not loans that must be repaid, Fraser said.
The highest priority for both budgets was providing matching funds for local school construction. Fraser and Dunshee said they funded all the local school building projects that were eligible this round. State money covers about 35 percent of the cost of school buildings. Local property levies cover the lion’s share.
The Senate would give the UW about $200 million for construction projects and Washington State University $115 million. Dunshee said the House provides less money for the research universities but more money for two-year community and technical college construction.
Dunshee’s committee will hold a hearing on the House proposal today. Negotiators will try to work out differences in spending priorities before the April 26 scheduled date of adjournment.
Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436
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