County staff brief council on closing weeks of state legislative session, highlight budget gaps and behavioral health priorities

At the Snohomish County Council's April 9 meeting, county government affairs staff and their lobbying team gave an update on the state legislative session, saying regular session has just over three weeks remaining and highlighting several large budget and policy differences between the two chambers.

Anna Kavan, senior government affairs analyst in the executive's office, said legislators were returning to the floor for remaining floor votes and to reconcile differences between bills. Lobbyists on the call said the capital budgets between House and Senate were about $300 million apart, operating budgets about $700 million apart, and the transportation budgets were the most divergent — described in the briefing as roughly an $8 billion difference between the chambers' transportation proposals.

Speakers said the Senate budget attempts structural changes, including a proposed transfer of 0.3 percentage points of the state sales tax (about $800 million a year) from the operating budget to the transportation budget, and a decision to handle culvert costs in the capital budget rather than…