Paul Begala, an advisor to President Clinton once noted that “The budget is a profoundly moral document. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be.” That is certainly true of the 2025-27 Washington state budget.
The legislature added $22.5 million for local government climate planning but underfunded services for crime victims and survivors by a similar amount - $21.4 million. The budget adds billions in pay raises for state employee unions but significantly underfunded Medicaid, technology for the state’s 988 suicide hotline, and rental assistance for low-income families.
The ongoing impacts of the budget that was adopted are revealed when looking at the supplemental budget requests submitted by state agencies for funding in the 2026 legislative session. The budget requests can be found on the website of the Office of Financial Management (OFM). Of the more than 500 individual requests, which add up to about $1.3 billion, there projects that are frivolous and unnecessary, but there are several that appear to be critical and worthwhile.
One thing that stands out is how the legislature too often funded political priorities instead of essential services. As Emily Makings at the Washington Research Council noted, the 2025-27 budget dramatically increased spending on salaries and compensation, while cutting funding for many critical programs.
Given the existing shortfall, there are some that are (or should be) unlikely to get funded. Here are a few examples of budget requests that should be rejected.
- State law requires that new or expanded hospitals apply for a “certificate of need” and go through a bureaucratic approval process. The process is funded in part by fees paid by applicants. Now the program is facing a shortfall, “driven primarily by a significant reduction in application requests in the post-COVID era.” The Department of Health is requesting $612,000 to maintain a program that few are using. Rather than prop up a program that is not being used, Washington should simply get rid of the needless Certificate of Need, as we have recommended in the past.
- The Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs is requesting $100,000 to “develop programs, or adapt existing programs, on Lunar New Year for K12 students in Washington.” I like Lunar New Year, the celebrations and particularly the food, but this is obviously not a priority when the state is facing a huge deficit.
- The legislature adopted legislation requiring cities to develop climate plans. These plans do not help with statewide CO2 reduction efforts and actually make achieving those same goals more expensive and bureaucratic. The Department of Commerce is asking for an additional $3.2 million “to fund local climate plans and plan implementation, and to deliver a technical guidance tool called the Washington Local Emissions Estimator.” The purpose of the Climate Commitment Act was to eliminate exactly this patchwork mess of local climate policies and regulations. This spends money the state doesn’t have to create plans that are needless and redundant.
- The Department of Natural Resources is requesting $3 million to fund “Urban Forestry Grants,” the purpose of which is to “Support improvements to urban forests and tree equity for health and climate.” I served (briefly) on my community’s tree board, and I know the value of trees. But this should be a funding priority for local communities, and if it is not, the state shouldn’t be spending money it does not have to do what local governments think isn’t worth using their own resources for.
There are also requests that seem worthwhile but were unfunded in the current budget. The requests are obviously written to be as persuasive as possible, so caution is warranted when reading them, but even if funded at a lower level, they should be priorities.
- Control of the invasive Japanese Beetle - $12,348,000. The Department of Agriculture notes that the beetle is “extremely destructive” to numerous crops including applies, grapes, cherries, hops and turfgrass. “Current funding will only allow treatment of 500 acres in the spring of 2026 of the 11,000 infested acres in South Central Washington and the new 800 acres in SeaTac.”
- Services for crime victims and survivors - $21,382,000. The Department of Commerce argues that due to reduced federal and state funding, the program that crime victim services could be cut by 45% after June 30, 2026.
- Fully fund Medicaid - $460,000,000. While state politicians point the finger at Congress and President Trump for cutting Medicaid, the state’s 2025-27 budget – adopted well before the recent federal funding bill – intentionally underfunded the state portion of Medicaid, claiming the agency could find savings to cover the shortfall. As the budget request from the Washington State Health Care Authority explains that the state budget assumed “cost savings that is higher than the agency can achieve.” The request notes, “The savings assumed are too aggressive, which results in a budget that is not sufficient to cover projected Apple Health healthcare costs.” The legislature chose to fund pay raises instead of Medicaid.
- Apprehending individuals on outstanding warrants - $6,500,000. The Department of Corrections is asking for funding to locate and arrest those with outstanding warrants. The budget request notes, “Individuals on warrant status pose the greatest risk to public safety and the agency,” and “Research has shown that less time spent on warrant status is linked to a reduction in crime rates.”
- Responding to increased instances of fatalities or near-fatalities of children in state supervision - $4,016,000. Due to a massive jump in the number of such cases, DCYF is seeking to engage parents in substance use disorder treatment and support safe home environments for young children. The budget request notes, “The fentanyl crisis continues to be one driving factor in child fatalities and near fatalities. Parental use of illicit fentanyl in the home creates a risk young children may accidentally ingest this extremely potent and dangerous drug.”
- Maintenance at Juvenile Rehabilitation facilities - $10,430,000. The Department of Children, Youth, & Families (DCYF) is asking for funding to replace roofing, HVAC repairs and other maintenance.
- Psychiatric services for DCYF clients - $842,000. This is emblematic of how the legislature has underfunded basic, low-cost services while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on entirely optional projects. The DCYF request would provide additional psychiatric services. The request notes that rates for services have not increased since 2017 and are now lower than Medicaid. A letter from a provider who stopped working with DCYF notes, “the increasing demands for my services, high costs of maintaining these contracts, communication challenges with DCYF staff, the time consuming nature of the collaboration, inadequate compensation compared to industry standards, and the resources needed to manage the contract, I have decided that it is no longer viable for my agency to continue working with DCYF.” This example of extreme underfunding should be kept in mind when people say the government should take over all health care funding.
- Office of Administrative Hearing operation - $5,310,000. This might be the best example of the games played by the legislature. The Office of Administrative Hearings is designed to resolve disputes between the public and state agencies. The budget request explains the challenge they face: “The Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) will go cash negative in July 2026...OAH planned to cover the shortfall using its $10 million reserve, but during the 2025 legislative session, $6 million was transferred to the General Fund. OAH’s rates haven’t changed since 2021 while inflation and COLAs rose over 15%. OAH revenue no longer covers costs and cannot fund the approved 2027 biennial budget. A $4.1million deficit is estimated by July 1, 2027.” The legislature underfunded the OAH and then took their reserve to fund other programs, leaving the office on the edge of bankruptcy at the end of the fiscal year.
In addition to these programs, the legislature must deal with the costs associated with yet more salary increases, including $10 million for community college pay raises, $3.4 million for Central Washington University pay increases, $4.7 million in increases for “academic student employees” and millions more to cover overtime and address “salary compression and inversion” for employees whose subordinates received raises and now must also receive raises.
There are also several budget requests that directly contradict the rhetoric we hear from politicians about education, energy costs, and federal budget cuts.
For example, the governor and others say the recent federal budget cuts funding to state government and contributes to the budget shortfall. There are examples of that, to be sure, but the Department of Social and Health Services notes that eligibility changes for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) in the federal budget would reduce the state portion of expenditures by nearly $23 million. A staff member at DSHS told me the reduction “is due to a projected decline in the immigrant subpopulation of TANF over the forecast horizon due to changing federal policies.”
A budget request from the Superintendent of Public Instruction asks for an additional $10 million for “Targeted Elementary Math Supports.” The request notes that “Washington students have continued to statistically outperform the national average in math. However, the state’s advantage has been slipping in recent years, especially between elementary and middle school.” The word “statistically” is a weasel word that claims Washington’s test scores aren’t significantly different from other states where students do better. But such games go both ways, which means that “statistically,” we are also indistinguishable from states significantly below the national average.
The budget request admits that “math scores have been trending downward for 12 years.” The language also contradicts the claims of Superintendent Reykdal who has claimed that Washington students are doing well in math.
Finally, my favorite note in a budget request comes from the Community and Technical Colleges, who request an additional $14.9 million for increased utility costs. The request specifically mentions the impact of the state’s CO2 tax, known as the Climate Commitment Act and the state’s renewable energy requirement, known as CETA, on utility rates. A letter accompanying the budget request notes that “PSE’s electrical rates have been rising steadily since 2019, driven in part by CETA. The unit (kWh) cost of electricity (average of all associated costs, commercial rates) has increased by roughly 58% since January 2019 at Bellevue College and is expected to continue rising…”
The letter also notes that natural gas costs are increasing, driven in part by the CCA. And they add that Puget Sound Energy (PSE) “was advised by the AG’s office not to show those costs as a line-item, Avista is showing those line-item costs.” The fact that PSE is prohibited by the state utilities commission from showing the costs of the CCA on bills was something we uncovered and highlighted in 2023. The decision by utilities commissioners to hide information the public has a right to know was irresponsible, eroding public trust and is now making it difficult for state-funded institutions to plan their own costs.
These problems were created by the legislature and are not a result of the federal budget. Even with a huge increase in spending, the state budget left very little for contingencies. The budget problems are being blamed on Donald Trump and the Republican Congress. In Washington state, Trump is an easy scapegoat, but it was clear that the state budget was unsustainable from the moment it was adopted, well before Congress ever passed its budget. For example, the legislature’s request that the state Medicaid program find $400 million in savings to make the budget balance was based on wishful thinking that is now coming back to bite the legislature.
If the legislature worried about the Trump Administration’s tariff and economic policies, it should have responsibly set aside funding for such contingencies. The fact that it did not is nobody’s fault but their own. Legislators wanted to spend every dollar on political priorities instead of dealing with the risks they claimed they saw coming all along.
The tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration certainly harm the state’s economy, but they are not the primary cause of the state’s budget woes.
There will be a strong push to add yet another massive tax increase in the next session. Proposals for a state income tax, a wealth tax, and other taxes are already being discussed. Instead, the legislature should cut wasteful spending.
For example, they should roll back some of the excessive pay raises from the last session. Pay increases for state employee unions were the single largest increase in spending in the last session. They are unsustainable and should be rolled back or, at the very least, limited.
There are also many wasteful programs that can be cut. For example, the state has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on so-called “climate” policies that do nothing. The current budget includes $22.5 million for local government climate planning, $20.5 million for energy audits, $6.8 million for the “environmental justice council,” nearly $28 million for tribes to provide “input” and “consultation” to the state, $1.7 million for the “development of statewide livestock composting infrastructure,” among many other needless expenditures.
The 2026 legislative session is a test of whether the governor and legislature are up to the moment – finding a way to prioritize government spending on critical projects and eliminating unnecessary, wasteful and excessive spending while setting aside resources to deal with economic and political uncertainty. If they reflexively look to more taxes, it won’t solve the underlying problem of unsustainable spending and will exacerbate the problem of innovators and businesses leaving the state or refusing to invest here. Blaming Trump will probably work as a political strategy in the near term, but it will not alleviate the real-world costs that budget mismanagement will impose on the people of Washington.