One fact of local interest that I left out of my story today and my blog post yesterday is that about $1 million is cut from media relations jobs in the budget.
"I couldn't see signing a report that I wouldn't support and didn't have a lot of input on,’’ Republican Rep. Gary Alexander of Thurston County said of skipping the signing ceremony. He expects a Senate vote Friday and a House vote perhaps Monday, and Republicans are likely to vote strongly against it.
As I reported, the budget also has 3 percent pay cuts effective April 1 for about 16,200 state employees not represented by unions. Go here for agency details on the $3.422 million in general fund cuts and nearly $8 million in cuts in all funds through June.
The pay cuts include $133,000 from House and $110,000 from the Senate.
The cuts hit virtually every agency and the bigger reductions are in agencies with larger budgets and fewer unionized staff. These include: $614,000 from the Attorney General’s Office; $385,000 from the Department of Corrections’ operations, $227,000 from Corrections' administrative support and $85,000 from Corrections’ community supervision; $260,000 from the Department of Social and Health Services' economic services division, $215,000 from its support services, $203,000 from children and family services; $169,000 from Employment Security; $147,000 from Department of Health; $144,000 from General Administration.
There also is a $1.7 million cut to DSHS management staffing.
Gov. Chris Gregoire is not in favor of the 3 percent pay cuts, and Rep. Alexander was skeptical that either the early pay cuts or the public-affairs-staff cuts would survive her veto. Gregoire’s staff also has expressed skepticism about making the DSHS management and public-relations cuts that soon.
Here is a highlights page for the budget deal and here is a longer summary.
The Senate's joint Republican and Democratic announcement on the budget is here. For other background, go here and here to find links to other budget documents on file with the budget committees.
