Construction budget omits WSU project

OLYMPIA – Washington State University’s top hope for this year’s state construction budget fizzled out Friday as lawmakers agreed on a final project list that does not include WSU’s top priority: a $57 million biotechnology building in Pullman.

The research building and its lab space remain badly needed at the main campus, WSU’s Larry Ganders said, and the university will likely try to convince lawmakers again in a year or two.

“We felt like there was a tremendous surge of support for it at the end of the legislative session,” he said. “We think we just ran out of time, more than anything else.” The 105-day session is slated to end Sunday.

WSU will, however, get $31.6 million to build a new nursing building at the university’s Riverpoint campus in Spokane. The list also launches three new buildings at WSU’s Vancouver campus, and includes tens of millions of dollars for maintenance and renovations at the main campus in Pullman.

The construction budget – which passed the House Friday and has been agreed to by the Senate – also includes hundreds of millions of dollars for projects large and small throughout Eastern Washington. They range from $2.5 million for renovation work at Spokane’s Fox Theater to $129,000 for a skate and bike park in Tonasket and $3,000 for a LeRoi Smelter Smokestack monument. The list also includes tens of millions of dollars for local public works, such as aquifer or wastewater treatment projects.

Locally, the biggest question mark in the budget was WSU’s biotechnology building. Gov. Christine Gregoire recommended spending $45 million on it, but budget writers in the House balked. House construction budget chairman Hans Dunshee and other lawmakers were unhappy that the list of the state colleges’ construction priorities made no mention of a special legislative favor last year: approval of the $31.6 million Riverpoint academic center in what would normally be a year of only minor budget tweaking. It was like an early Christmas present, Dunshee later said. It should have been counted in this year’s budget.

Complicating matters for WSU, both Gregoire and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown were unhappy that the university didn’t give a higher priority to the nursing building, which they see as critical for the region’s economy.

Despite heavy lobbying by Palouse lawmakers, neither the House nor Senate budget included any money for the biotechnology lab in Pullman. It was impossible, Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville said, to overcome Dunshee’s opposition.

“He’s spanking them (WSU) and then he’s kicking them while they’re down,” Schoesler fumed in the Senate wings earlier this week. “It’s kind of a bully thing.”

Dunshee said that the state only has so much money. He said Schoesler’s district, which includes two state universities, a prison and other big-ticket items, got the most construction money of any legislative district in the state.

In an 11th-hour bid to win approval, the university asked to pay for the project with money from its “permanent fund,” a $300 million pool of cash from state timber sales. The university now just taps the interest from the fund. Some lawmakers liked the idea, Ganders said, but it was a harder sell to Dunshee and other House Democrats.

“We’ll be back with this project,” Ganders said. “We regard it as delayed.”

Among the dozens of other local projects included in the bill:

“ Girl Scout Program Center, Spokane: $300,000.

“ Mobius science center, Spokane: $1.5 million.

“ Northeast Community Center, Spokane: $250,000.

“ Spokane River Whitewater Course: $400,000.

“ West Central Community Center: $500,000.

“ Children’s Museum, Spokane: $115,000.

“ Museum of Arts and Culture: $406,000.

“ Design of a new Armed Forces and Aerospace Museum: $295,000.

“ Spokane Falls Community College’s new business and social science building: $18.5 million.

“ Rural Resources Community Action, Newport: $170,000.

“ Omak Grandstand work: $250,000.

“ Chewelah Peak Learning Center: $1.95 million

“ Empire Theater, Tekoa: $25,000.

“ Eastern Washington University renovation of Cheney Hall: $2 million.