The following is a statement from Rep. Ross Hunter on the economic and revenue forecast. Hunter is the state House Appropriations Committee Chair.

“[The] forecast shows incremental improvement in the revenue picture, but doesn’t change the long-term picture or the problem we face in January when we start to write the 2015-17 Washington State budget. For the last six years we have made it through the recession by making drastic reductions to the level of service provided to Washington residents.

“We’re seeing the effect of these reductions in court cases finding that we need to lower caseworker client loads when dealing with troubled families and kids in the foster care system and demanding that we end the practice of ‘psychiatric boarding’ in hospitals (and soon in our jail system, which is probably worse than the hospital situation.) These are the results of reductions we made to have a balanced budget.

“In a bipartisan agreement the Legislature approved the last biennial budget with a ‘budget outlook’ that shows what that budget looks like over the next four years. That 4-year budget shows that every dime of new expected revenue is accounted for in the budget we will write in January, and that’s before we consider any of the problems above, the crazy fire year we had, higher education, having a responsible ending fund balance, and of course, the McCleary investment.

“In other statements today, and again when we convene in January you will most likely hear that we have “billions in new revenue” and that if only we made reasonable decisions we would be able to fund all the good stuff that people really want. The bipartisan four-year budget we agreed to in 2013 and again this year already allocates all of that new money, and the majority (around 57%) of it goes to education. Adding billions more to K12 as the court demands will require new revenue or drastic cuts to services like mental health treatment or the foster care system that the courts are already telling us are inadequate.

“I look forward to an interesting and productive session in 2015 as we resolve these problems and re-invest in Washington’s future.”