Ferguson cancels trip to Governors’ conference as budget work continues

OLYMPIA – Gov. Bob Ferguson canceled his trip to a meeting of the nation’s governors in Washington, D.C. this week as work continues to identify cuts to the state’s budget.

According to a schedule released by the governor’s office, Ferguson initially planned to travel to the National Governors Association Winter Meeting on Wednesday after meeting with the Office of Financial Management and was scheduled to return on Saturday. On Wednesday afternoon, Ferguson’s office released an updated schedule which said the governor would remain in Washington state “to focus on working with agencies on budget reduction proposals.”

The National Governors Association, founded in 1908, is the bipartisan collection of governors throughout the country, with more than 45 scheduled to attend this week’s meetings.

According to the updated schedule, Ferguson will make a budget announcement next week.

Ferguson and lawmakers are looking to address a projected $12 billion deficit in the state’s budget in the next four years. Days before he took office, Ferguson called on most state agencies to identify an equivalent 6% budget reduction across the board, and for four-year higher education institutions to propose 3% in cuts.

As he discussed the plan, Ferguson said K-12 education, community and technical colleges, public safety agencies, and entitlement benefits delivered by state agencies would not be affected.

The governor has repeatedly said he would scrub the budget before considering new revenue streams and said his plan could save the state at least $4 billion over the next four years.

During a news conference last week, Ferguson said while he was still reviewing the proposals agencies submitted, “for the most part, agencies leaned into it.”

“Are there a couple of exceptions? Yes, and I’ve communicated back to those entities that they need to go back and give me something that I can work with,” Ferguson said, declining to specify which agencies had failed to initially meet the target.

Ferguson met with Rep. Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, and Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, the House and Senate minority leaders, Tuesday, with the state’s “broad budget issues” likely to be a main topic, Braun said during a media availability Tuesday morning.

“His directive to the agencies to provide 6% reduction opportunities has been delivered, I know that they’re vetting those,” Braun said.

Before his meeting with the governor, Stokesbary said if the Legislature were to adopt a budget with the same spending levels this year as it did in 2023, the state would have a billion-dollar budget surplus.

“So it shouldn’t take that much to get us back to fiscal sanity and avoid $10 or $15 billion of new taxes,” Stokesbary said.

First elected in 2014, Stokesbary also drew a contrast between Ferguson’s administration and former Gov. Jay Inslee.

“For the first time since I’ve been elected, we have a governor who seems to be living on the same planet as the rest of us, and a governor who wants to engage with the Legislature and improve the delivery of services that his administration is responsible for delivering,” Stokesbary said. “So we’re certainly not going to agree on everything, but we’re going to look for those areas of agreement.”

During a media availability Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Jaimie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said he met with the governor last week to discuss “a variety of issues.”

Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said Tuesday she had not met with the governor since the first week of the session, though a meeting had been scheduled “in the next couple of weeks” and staff continue to communicate with the governor’s office “quite regularly.”

Jinkins said Tuesday that staff continues to review the budget proposals submitted by Inslee before leaving office, included a budget plan that would balance the budget only through cuts.

“So when we are going through that, it’s fairly kind of devastating,” Jinkins said. “The things that it cuts, everything from Medicaid dental care to kidney dialysis for people on Medicaid, lots of cuts to long-term care for seniors and folks with developmental disabilities, and huge reductions in terms of higher education and even K-12.”

Inslee separately proposed a budget balanced through an array of new revenue streams, including a proposal to tax 1% of a resident’s net worth above $100 million, which the former governor said would apply to approximately 3,400 Washington residents. Inslee estimated the tax could raise $10.6 billion over the next four years.