As proposed, the House Appropriations chair's 2016 supplemental operating budget would increase near general fund-state plus opportunity pathways (NGFS+) spending by $466 million. Of that, $246.8 million is considered policy level and $219.1 million is maintenance level (the cost of providing current services).

The chair's proposal would increase 2015-17 spending by $54.6 million less than the governor's proposal, but the split between policy and maintenance spending is completely different. In the governor's proposal, net policy changes total $260,000 and maintenance changes total $520.3 million. The maintenance level changes in the various budgets proposal are usually very close to each other, if not identical. Some of the major differences in maintenance level between the Appropriations chair and governor are:

• Differences in caseload adjustments and utilization in various programs.
• Classification differences. For example, the governor includes spending for individual provider homecare worker overtime (in accordance with a federal rule) in maintenance level, but the Appropriations chair includes the spending as a policy change. Spending for wildfire costs is another big one. The governor classifies a lot of this spending as maintenance level, while the chair considers it a policy change.

Another big accounting difference between the governor and Appropriations chair is that although both have proposed increasing teacher salaries as a way to recruit and retain more teachers, the governor's teacher shortage proposal was separate from his budget proposal. The chair's teacher shortage proposal is included in his budget proposal.

Some of the policy level spending items in the Appropriations chair's proposal are:

• $98.5 million for recruiting and retaining teachers and other school staff,
• $9.0 million to maintain State Need Grant service levels at the 2015 level in 2016,
• $21.0 million to pay the McCleary penalty,
• $26.1 million to restore savings from the Healthier Washington program,
• $33.8 million for individual provider overtime,
• $32.2 million to pay settlement costs in the Moore v. HCA case,
• $13.7 million for the behavioral health innovation fund established by HB 2453, and
• $11.0 million for Western State Hospital in response to the "emergent and imminent jeopardy determination by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."

Policy level savings include

• $14.6 million from making changes to high school assessments (SHB 2214),
• $9.8 million in the Department of Early Learning by using a federal childcare development block grant in lieu of general fund-state dollars, and
• $42.1 million from shifting funding for wildfires from the NGFS+ to the disaster response account and the budget stabilization account (BSA).

Recall that these spending changes do not include the $467 million that the Appropriations chair would appropriate from the BSA. (The governor would appropriate $178 million from the BSA.)