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Remember, there is no quid pro quo.
Denials aside, there appear to be plenty of connections between Gov. Chris Gregoire’s education reform package and her hopes of building support for a temporary sales tax increase.
Gregoire on Tuesday unveiled bills that will finally add…

Congressional negotiators are close to reaching agreement on a $1 trillion budget for the federal government in 2012, with a vote expected by the end of the week. The measure would draw from competing House and Senate budget plans to pay for the Pell Grant Program, enacting changes to both the…

The state House overwhelmingly approved what many called a “partial down payment” on the state’s $2 billion budget gap Tuesday night, setting the stage for the special session to end today.
The vote was 86-8 in favor of House Bill 2058, which relies on less than $200 million in actual cuts…

Also Tuesday, Gregoire proposed creating opportunities for struggling schools to partner with universities and to create a new office called the Office of Student Achievement that will focus on educational attainment for students from high school until graduate school.

This is the monthly report of actual collections and it used to see how accurate the most-recent forecast is.
Since the latest forecast came just last month, this is the first monthly check and it appears to show that things are no worse than expected. According to today’s report by the…

Legislative leaders unveiled a budget plan Monday that seeks to trim $479 million from the state's $1.4 billion deficit through a combination of cuts, fund transfers and delayed payments.

Budget leaders began discussing the proposal in committees Monday…

Eleven days into the special legislative session, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Thursday acknowledged what many lawmakers have been saying for weeks: The Legislature won't pass a new state budget by the end of the month.

Gregoire had been insistent that the…

State lawmakers are in advanced discussions to make $400 million in budget cuts next week as a preliminary fix to the state’s $1.4 billion shortfall, top budget negotiators said Friday.
Republican Rep. Gary Alexander said he is reviewing a proposal from his Democratic counterparts, seeking…

There may be no place where the gap between politics and reality is wider right now than the UW's computer science department.

Politics these days is all about shrinking. How can we retrench, reduce or reset.

But even the lecture…

With jobless rates hovering near 9 percent in the Evergreen state, a few Washington lawmakers say they are zeroing in on a way to fire up the regional economy.
Their idea is a new way to pay for government construction projects. Sen. Derek Kilmer says the concept is simple: Issue revenue…