House budget: Questions

Rep. Kelli Linville said the House budget maintains the number of students who can receive work study — but the employers will have to pay more.

As for WAVE: “We just can’t make a commitment until we can see the end of the huge budget problem that we have,” Rep. Kathy Haigh said. She said the House budget calls for maintaining those scholarships for students who currently have them, but not awarding additional scholarships.

What are the differences between the Senate budget and the House budget? “As with anything, the devil’s in the details,” Linville said, adding that she’ll start digging through those today.

What about facilities closures? Rep. Eric Pettigrew said it’s still something they’re looking at. “That’s what we’re going to be looking at is the needs of recipients.”

On university cuts: Rep. Kathy Haigh said UW is getting cut slightly more because they will be getting more per student in tuition. Plus, she said, their priorities are work study and student need grants to help balance out the cuts.

“I’ve likened this to a 9-1-1 call,” Rep. Mark Ericks said of the financial crisis the state is in. He said no one wanted to raise taxes last year, but the crisis gave the state a “roundhouse punch.”

How many state employees might lose their jobs? What other effects will the cuts have?

“As far as the health care goes, I think everyone sitting up here understands that our public benefits are, we need to redo our benefits somehow,” she said. She said Reps. Sullivan and Ericks are working on it. She said the state cannot continue to fund healthcare the way it is funded now.

Linville said 3,000 FTEs (the equivalent of a full-time position) were eliminated last year and this year 692 are in this year’s budget.

Tags: Budget