Details will be emerging, but Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget office has released its proposed supplemental budget to close the remainder of a $1.1 billion budget deficit through June. It hastens the end for the Basic Health Plan and the Disability Lifeline’s cash grants and medical programs that already face elimination in Gregoire’s two-year budget announced earlier this week to close a $4.6 billion two-year shortfall.
And it also shifts payment of about $253 million of funds for public school districts from June to July 1, in effect buying a “25th month” of revenue for the ongoing two-year budget cycle that ends June 30. It also eliminates the equivalent of 390 more full-time equivalent jobs, mostly in human services.
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