As I’ve reviewed the 2027–29 budget requests from state agencies, I’ve written about the full requests of several major state agencies. (Previous posts on the 2027–29 budget requests are available here.) But there are also interesting policy proposals scattered among smaller agencies.

For example, some notable policy proposals include:

• The Department of Agriculture requests $46.6 million in 2027–29 and $46.6 million in 2029–31 for enhanced food assistance. That would be on top of $41.1 million that is already included at the carry-forward level for 2027–29. According to the request, general fund–state (GFS) food assistance funding was $12.4 million in 2017–19, $13.0 million in 2019–21, $50.1 million in 2021–23, $75.3 million in 2023–25, and $134.4 million in 2025–27.
• The Office of the Governor would shift $5.9 million in 2027–29 and $5.9 million in 2029–31 from the GFS to the Gov central service account. In other words, funding for the governor’s policy office, the state’s Washington, D.C. office, and the YourWA program (which apparently “supports state agencies by providing a comprehensive approach to improve customer experience throughout state government”) would come from agency premiums paid through the central services model.
• The Pollution Liability Insurance Program, an agency that is funded mainly with revenues from the petroleum products tax, is scheduled to expire July 1, 2030. The agency requests reauthorization for another ten years, and it requests $7.3 million in appropriations from non-GFS accounts for 2029–31. The agency is proposing a budget of $15.6 million from non-GFS accounts for 2027–29.
• The enacted 2025–27 budget had appropriated $100 million from the GFS to the supplemental criminal justice account. The account was created in ESHB 2015 and must be used for local law enforcement grants. For 2027–29, the Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) is requesting that the $100 million in the supplemental criminal justice account be reappropriated so that the CJTC can continue “to complete approved grant reimbursements and associated program activities for local and tribal law enforcement agencies through the legislative end date of June 30, 2028.” According to the request, there are 29 approved contracts and another 59 are being processed. The request doesn’t say how much of the money has been distributed.
• The Washington Horse Racing Commission is currently funded mainly by the parimutuel tax. For 2027–29, it is requesting that $3.3 million (about 67% of its budget) be shifted to the GFS. According to the request, the Commission “has been operating at a deficit for the past decade and has only maintained a positive account balance thanks to frequent but inconsistent transfers from the General Fund account.”
• The Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) requests $123.3 million in 2027–29 and $97.6 million in 2029–31 for the Workers’ Compensation Systems Modernization (WCSM) program. Half of the money would come from the accident account (608) and half would come from the medical aid account (609). The request would move “L&I from a mainframe to a cloud­first environment, simplifying L&I’s technical ecosystem, increasing data reliability and accessibility, and making L&I’s technical environment more adaptable to changes in the future so a large­scale modernization will not be required again.” According to the request, L&I has spent more than $48 million over the past 10 years on this program “without producing results in the form of purchasing or implementing new solutions. This new approach is a significant change in the delivery model that addresses the repeated challenges of lack of clear authority, no clear direction, and lack of expertise observed by both WaTech Oversight and WCSM’s Quality Assurance vendors over the last decade.”

Finally, note that the Employment Security Department’s request does not include any backfill for the paid family and medical leave account. As I wrote earlier this year, deficits are expected in the account going forward. In July, the program actuary said that deficits in the account are “projected intermittently through 2028, becoming sustained in 2029.”