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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
It’s budget time as we near the final weeks of the 2020 session. The House supplemental operating, transportation, and capital budgets have been released, heard and passed through their committees, and are now reaching the chamber floors for votes. These budgets make mid-course adjustments to our state’s main two-year budgets.
To learn more about our transportation projects; potential flood relief funding through the capital budget; and efforts to bring forward potential tax, including property tax, relief through amendments on the supplemental operating budget, please watch my latest video update by clicking on the photo below. You can also keep reading this update for more details.
We’ve already passed two of the three supplemental budgets off the House floor. One was a good, hard-worked bipartisan budget, the other fell a bit short and was a partisan proposal.
The House supplemental transportation budget is an example of taking challenges and turning them into successes by putting aside partisan politics and focusing on doing what’s right for everyone in our state. I’m happy to report that because of the hard-work and true bipartisanship of the chairman and ranking member on the House Transportation Committee, all the projects within our district that were put on pause by the governor are now unpaused and will hopefully move forward unchanged. I’ll keep you posted.
In the coming days, we will have the chance to vote on another bipartisan budget – the House supplemental capital budget. I’ve been working hard to include potential funding for flood relief throughout our district. I’m hoping funding will stay in this budget as it moves through the final stages of the legislative process for flood relief in Waitsburg, Starbuck, and maybe Walla Walla. I’ll once again keep you posted.
Focusing on affordability | Efforts to bring much-needed tax relief through the supplemental operating budget
The House supplemental operating budget unfortunately is a partisan proposal, but not from our lack of trying to work together to bring some tax relief your way.
We offered two amendments to the budget. The similarities of both amendments are they would’ve implemented the governor’s proposed budget. Subsequently, the first amendment would’ve also implemented $30 car tabs, the Working Families Tax Credit, and some other sales tax exemptions. It would’ve done all these things within current revenue without using the rainy-day fund. The second amendment would’ve implemented $600 million per year in property tax relief.
Ultimately, the supplemental operating budget passed off the House floor, without this much-needed tax relief, and without House Republican support.
We’ll see what the final supplemental budgets look like in the coming days, as final negotiations happen between the House and the Senate.
It’s an honor to serve you.
Sincerely,
Bill Jenkin
