The House Appropriations Committee chair’s 2023 supplemental operating budget proposal would reduce 2021–23 appropriations from funds subject to the outlook (NGFO) by a net of $804.0 million.

Maintenance level (the cost of continuing current services, adjusted for enrollment and inflation) changes would increase appropriations by $423.9 million and new policies would reduce appropriations by $1.228 billion.

Some notable policy changes include:

• Like the Senate 2023 supplemental, the House chair’s proposal assumes savings of $653.0 million from the enhanced federal Medicaid match. (These are extra federal dollars provided during the pandemic that supplant state spending on Medicaid.)
• The House proposal would fully repeal the $800 million extra payment to the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) Plan 1 that is currently planned to occur on June 30. (The Senate budget would reduce the extra payment to $250 million.)
• The House proposal would save $150 million by reducing the appropriation for the family and medical leave insurance (FMLI) account to $200 million. Like the Senate, the House would allow the funding to be used to seed a reserve for the paid family and medical leave program. (The Senate proposal would appropriate $225 million for this purpose.)
• The House proposal would appropriate $100 million for UW hospital support.

Additionally, the House chair’s 2023 supplemental proposal would save $34.3 million from reduced school district compliance with K–3 class size requirements. The savings assumption would “reflect estimated K-3 class sizes of 17.27 in the 2022-23 school year due to a decrease in school districts meeting class sizes of 17 students to 1 teacher.” (To be clear, the House proposal would not increase the statutory class sizes. Instead, it assumes savings because districts aren’t meeting the statutory requirement.)

Similarly, as I wrote earlier this week, the House chair’s proposal assumes that there will be $65 million in reversions (appropriations that are not ultimately spent) in 2023–25 due to lower K–3 class size compliance. That’s a much larger reversion assumption than in previous official outlooks. The Senate budget neither books savings in 2021–23 nor assumes more reversions in 2023–25 due to this issue.

(Previous posts on the House budget proposals are here.)