The scheduled end of the 2015 legislative session is only 12 days away. That’s a very short amount of time to complete all the work yet to be done – especially on the budget. This week the House and the Senate began formal negotiations over their budget proposals. The two approaches vary greatly. The House did not pass a full budget, but only a spending plan that would require an additional $1.5 billion in new taxes. They have said that they intend to vote for these additional tax increases, but they haven’t done so yet. This means that the House budget doesn’t balance and is therefore little more than an empty promise – like a check written with insufficient funds.

Today the state Senate passed a bipartisan capital-budget proposal for 2015-17 that would build more than 2,100 classrooms, fully fund 80 parks and trails, and devote money to local-government infrastructure projects statewide. We were able to secure funding in the Senate capital-budget proposal for construction projects throughout the 4th Legislative District, including $1.1 million for the third and final phase of the Spokane Valley Tech addition. When completed, Spokane Valley Tech will serve more than 500 students in 10 high-demand science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs.

Click here to read the full Report from Olympia.