February 23, 2026\u2014The state House and Senate\u00a0dropped their operating budget proposals late\u00a0Sunday, February 22, with public hearings scheduled for 4 pm February 23 in the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For higher education, the budget outlook overall remains lean. Cuts from last session remain in place, and an additional 1.5 percent administrative cut will land on all public higher education this session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cuts would be deeper, but the House and Senate both\u00a0propose to offset a larger cut in operating funds\u00a0to\u00a0the state\u2019s four-year\u00a0institutions\u00a0by\u00a0back-filling from\u00a0the\u00a0capital budget\u2019s minor works account. The minor works account would then be replenished with bond revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This novel maneuver is essentially a one-time transfer from the capital budget (which funds buildings and facilities) to the operating budget (which funds most everything else). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0House and Senate will release capital budget proposals\u00a0later\u00a0on February 23, and we will learn then what\u00a0impact\u00a0this strategy could have on Evergreen\u2019s capital funding.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both budgets offer the college $35,000 toward maintenance of the Historic Lord Mansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Evergreen, the Senate budget<\/a> is the best since it fully revokes the $2.7 million unique Evergreen cut levied last session. The House budget<\/a> only rescinds half of the cut. We will be making our views known to budget writers in testimony and meetings over the coming days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Legislature will hold budget hearings throughout the week. The bills will be heard in the House and Senate chambers over the weekend of February 28-March 1. Budget conference teams will meet next week to reconcile and land on a final version of the operating, capital and transportation budgets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 23, 2026\u2014The state House and Senate\u00a0dropped their operating budget proposals late\u00a0Sunday, February 22, with public hearings scheduled for 4 pm February 23 in the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees.\u00a0\u00a0 For higher education, the budget outlook overall remains lean. Cuts from last session remain in… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5116,"featured_media":203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}