The House and Senate released their respective budgets last week. Both budgets include significant funding for K-12 education, as well as some funding for behavioral health. The good news is that there are no proposed cuts to hospitals in either budget. The next step is for the budgets to be adopted in their chambers of origin followed by negotiations to reconcile differences between now and March 8.
For mental health, both budgets have an overwhelming emphasis on increased funding to the state hospitals and funding for forensic mental health patients where the state continues not to meet court requirements. While WSHA supports increased funding for mental health, we continue to advocate for increases for community-based services. For more information, see our recent Inside Olympia.
To compare the budgets, see our comparison chart. (Andrew Busz, andrewb@wsha.org)
