Budget

Transportation and capital budget proposals would appropriate some federal COVID relief dollars

Yesterday the chair and ranking member of the House Capital Budget Committee released their proposed capital budget for 2021–23. The House and Senate Transportation Committee chairs released their proposed transportation budgets on Monday. The three budgets would make use of federal funding that is expected to come to Washington from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) […]

How will the Senate operating budget deal with the “curse of riches”?

As Sen. Rolfes suggested at the Ways & Means Committee meeting last week, the operating budget (to be proposed this afternoon) may not have a complete plan for all the federal relief funding coming to Washington. (See also David Schumacher’s comments on Sunday’s episode of AWB’s Capitol Focus.) It is not yet clear exactly how […]

Washington will receive $229 million from the ARP Act for COVID testing in schools; operating budgets will be proposed this week

On March 17, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it will use $10 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act for COVID-19 screening testing to help schools reopen. According to HHS, Washington will receive $229.4 million for this purpose. This is the first announcement of how billions of […]

Washington’s state and local governments will have more than $11 billion in federal relief funding to distribute from the ARP Act

There are several funding buckets in the ARP Act. The largest that will be distributed by states and local governments are the fiscal relief funds and the emergency and secondary school emergency relief funds. But there’s also funding for childcare, transit, and rental assistance, for example. The table below shows known and estimated federal allocations […]

Washington’s public K–12 schools will receive $1.853 billion from ARP Act (on top of $1.042 billion previously appropriated by Congress)

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act includes $122.7 billion for a third round of the elementary and secondary school emergency relief (ESSER) fund. These funds are very flexible, but 20% of the ESSER III funds must be used to address learning loss. From this third round, Washington will receive $1.853 billion. Of that, $1.667 billion […]

How much the state, cities, and counties are expected to receive from the new state and local fiscal recovery funds (by jurisdiction)

The state treasurer notes that Washington’s state and local governments will receive about $7 billion from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act. He is referring to the amounts from the state and local fiscal recovery funds, which are direct funding for governments that are meant to be used to respond to the emergency or cover […]

As passed by Congress, there are new restrictions on use of the American Rescue Plan’s state fiscal recovery fund (including a restriction on any net tax reductions)

On Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed the American Rescue Plan Act, and today the U.S. House of Representatives concurred with the changes the Senate made to the bill. We are still reviewing the bill and its potential impacts on Washington’s budget. (Previous posts on the legislation are here and here.) To begin, we are particularly […]

Public health funding would push Washington’s share of the federal relief bill over $10 billion

As I wrote earlier this week, the American Rescue Plan Act that was passed by the U.S. House on Saturday would send billions of dollars to Washington (if enacted). Two major pieces of the legislation are the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds (sec. 5001). The Tax Foundation estimates that, if the bill is […]

Federal COVID aid bill would send billions to Washington (including some that could replace lost revenue)

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the aid package proposed by President Biden. The $1.9 trillion price tag includes many different pots of money. Jerry Cornfield of the Everett Herald reports that federal grants to Washington would increase by at least $7.6 billion under the bill. I don’t think that figure includes the bill’s […]

More relief funds headed out the door; rainy day fund balance historically high

Today Gov. Inslee signed three bills related to federal relief funds: SHB 1095 specifies that federal and state grants for businesses that address “the impacts of conditions giving rise to” official emergencies are not subject to the business and occupation tax, the public utility tax, or the retail sales and use tax. (For example, businesses […]