Gov. Jay Inslee delivered his State of the State speech on Tuesday to open up the 2023 legislative session, touching on a wide range of issues he wants to see lawmakers address.

After two years of virtual addresses, Inslee delivered his State of the State in person to the Legislature.

The Executive Director of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center Misha Werschkul said families have a number of concerns on their plates as lawmakers meet in Olympia.

"The challenges are multifaceted and layered," said Werschkul. "He spoke about housing and behavioral health, climate change. All of those are incredibly important areas that are impacting all of our everyday lives."

The legislative session lasts 105 days and began on Monday.

Among the biggest proposals Inslee introduced was a $4 billion referendum that would increase the speed of housing construction to address the affordability crisis.

Inslee noted the state's Housing Trust Fund is an important tool to boost supply, but isn't enough money for the current scale of the shortage.

Werschkul said the referendum is a bold policy measure.

"What he's talking about is really something much bigger," said Werschkul, "something in the billions of dollars, something that requires a public vote - that is going to have a real impact."

The governor praised lawmakers for passing the Working Families Tax Credit, which will send as much as $1,200 to more than 400,000 Washington families starting next month.

Werschkul said she also sees the policy as an accomplishment for the state and hopes lawmakers will expand eligibility for the program this session.

"So that younger adults and older adults can actually access that as well," said Werschkul, "and can make sure that the program really works as intended to get people the money that they're eligible for."

The session is scheduled to end on April 29.

A new study provides New York State with an outline of necessary updates to its school funding formula.

The Rockefeller Institute study called for improving several areas such as the Regional Cost Index, which has not been updated in 18 years. Other focus areas include the poverty metric, which does not give a comprehensive picture of students' needs.

Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children of New York, said other updates should have been considered.

"We're disappointed that there are no recommendations to add weight for students experiencing homelessness and students in foster care so that schools can better meet their needs to provide per-pupil funding for preschoolers in pre-K and 3-K," Levine explained.

She added the provisions could be passed through bills introduced by lawmakers.

More than 155,000 New York State public school students were homeless during the 2022-2023 school year. Of those, 120,000 were New York City Public School students. Columbia University found the current Foundation Aid formula uses poverty numbers from the 2000 Census and cost-of-living averages from 2006.

The Rockefeller Institute study suggested numerous ways for lawmakers to update the school funding formula. However, Levine argued some of them must be assessed for their efficacy, including a recommendation to update the poverty measure and provide a different way to measure it.

"The study provides a few different ways of doing that," Levine observed. "The study notes one of the proposals for how to change that weight would result in New York City seeing a projected decrease of around $392 million."

Other recommendations in the report included using a scaling aid approach to better supply funding for students with disabilities, a new adjustment based on instruction service hours for English Language Learners and letting school districts use Foundation Aid dollars for general education purposes, rather than regimented direct spending.


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New York could see major effects from President-elect Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency is set to slice $2 trillion in federal spending. While their focus is cutting agency budgets and the government's workforce, safety nets will be in their crosshairs.

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said states will have flexibilities if cuts occur, but they will make using services harder.

"In practice, these flexibilities will mean things like cutting back eligibility, adding red tape so that it's harder for families and people to get through the process, which cuts down on enrollment," Alker explained. "We know that from the unwinding that we've just been through."

She added benefits could be limited and providers who see a lot of low-wage working families might face reimbursement cuts. There has been consideration to cut Medicaid's expansion match rate to a regular rate, which would move most costs to states. Estimates show New York's cost for expansion group under a reduced federal match rate could be more than $5 billion, if it occurs.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could face cuts as well.

Mayra Alvarez, president of the Children's Partnership, said the proposed changes outlined in Project 2025 could make the program harder to access while increasing inefficiencies.

"Everything from increasing time limits for the program for adults without dependents," Alvarez outlined. "Also, eliminating categorical eligibility, which would remove the state options of increasing the gross income limits from 130 % of the poverty line to up to 200%."

In 2022, 53% of SNAP participants in New York were families with children, and close to 3 million people statewide relying on the program. Nationwide, SNAP has helped lift more than 3.4 million people out of poverty in 2023.

In the Wyoming governor's new supplemental state budget, the biggest line item by far is wildfire recovery.

Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday gave a virtual speech to kick off several days of agency budget meetings, in which legislators request supplements to the 2025-2026 biennial budget adopted in March.

Gordon noted the historic nature of the 2024 wildfire season, which he said burned 850,000 acres across the state and cost more than $55 million in suppression efforts. The price tag emptied several state coffers, he said, and he requested $130 million be added to the new budget for similar purposes.

"Without further appropriation, Wyoming will not have sufficient unobligated funds to effectively respond to future fires or other potential emergencies such as flooding or rapid runoff or massive winter and spring snowstorms," Gordon contended. "Which as we know are not uncommon to Wyoming."

The funds would also help with recovery efforts after wildfire, such as preventing invasive plant species from taking over burned landscapes and providing assistance to restore lost infrastructure and stabilize watersheds.

Gordon also requested funds to both mitigate past federal actions and prepare for future ones. One example is the federal COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act, designed to fund local governments' infrastructure projects. The deadline for the plans was this year. Many proposed project in Wyoming were delayed, Gordon said, because of "federal deadlines and supply-chain issues." He asked for more than $20 million in mineral royalty grants to fill the gaps.

"The unprecedented influx of federal programs, beginning with the CARES Act, skewed Wyoming's homegrown approach to addressing community emergencies and needs," Gordon argued. "This is the time we can return to the more conservative and direct approach our state is accustomed to."

Gordon also asked for two additional senior attorneys to be funded for the Attorney General's Office to continue challenging federal regulations, which, he said, "hinder our ability to manage agriculture, energy, water and wildlife."


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