A cadre of Washington lawmakers, budget officials and business and labor leaders set out Monday in search of a “shared understanding” of why budget shortfalls are plaguing the state and what can be done to avoid them.

It will be a two-year endeavor to assess the degree to which cost assumptions, revenue forecasts and spending decisions contribute to structural imbalances and to recommend adjustments that could put the state on firmer financial footing.

It is an ambitious task for the 18-person Joint Legislative-Executive Committee on Budget Transparency and Fiscal Sustainability. The bipartisan panel has eight lawmakers – two from each of the four legislative caucuses – plus four members of Gov. Bob Ferguson’s administration and leaders of two business associations and two labor organizations.

K.D. Chapman-See, Ferguson’s budget director, told the committee that she hoped it “can serve as an opportunity for folks to gain a clearer understanding of what’s been contributing to our projected structural deficits and, really importantly, that we can find a shared vision for how we could get to a state budget that sustainably delivers what Washingtonians need and also want their state government to deliver.”

Not everyone at Monday’s inaugural meeting was as optimistic.

Republican Reps. Josh Penner of Orting and Travis Couture of Allyn each voiced concern that this exercise is designed to justify overspending by majority Democrats in the Legislature and Democratic governors, including Ferguson.

“When I hear the word ‘we’ I think that comes with a giant asterisk because there’s the ‘we’ that makes the decisions on the budget and there is the ‘we’ who says we don’t think we’re going in the right direction,” Penner said. “I think I’m part of the latter.”

Following the meeting, Couture, who is the Republican lead on the House Appropriations Committee, said he arrived skeptical but left more hopeful that “we can get everyone to accept the same baseline facts” for why the budget is not healthy.

“Part of the goal is to develop a shared understanding of the facts. Those should be objective,” said committee member Sen. Drew Hansen, D-Bainbridge Island, after the meeting.

‘Washington is not alone’

In back-to-back legislative sessions, Ferguson and Washington lawmakers have wrestled with huge gaps between what the state is collecting in taxes and what it costs to pay for commitments in education, human services, health care, corrections and other day-to-day government operations.

In response, Democratic lawmakers and Ferguson relied on tax hikes, spending cuts and tapping into reserves and pension funds to paper over the shortfalls. Another gap looms in 2027. Credit ratings agencies recently put the state on notice, citing one-time maneuvers that have been part of the fiscal balancing act in Olympia.

With the looming imbalance in mind, lawmakers created the committee through a provision tucked deep inside the supplemental budget approved earlier this year.

This panel will focus on the operating budget, which pays for schools, human services, government operations and anything else lawmakers decide needs money. The current two-year plan includes $80.2 billion of spending. Budgets for transportation and construction projects are smaller and dealt with separately.

The committee’s work consists of one phase this year and a second in 2027.

This year’s emphasis is fiscal sustainability as outside experts and committee members will review revenue growth projections, spending assumptions and cost drivers. They’ll consider how other states deal with mandatory and ongoing expenses.

Next year, the attention will be on management staffing levels, administrative overhead and performance practices, and on how budget information is made available to the public.

Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonpartisan nonprofit that’s done similar work in other states, will steer the committee’s work at no cost to the state. It will conduct research, including interviews of committee members, to evaluate Washington’s budget-writing process.

“The first point I want to make is Washington is certainly not alone in having budget problems,” said Josh Goodman, a senior officer and state fiscal policy specialist for Pew, at Monday’s meeting. He shared a chart showing more than half the states are facing budget challenges in 2027.

The nonprofit will deliver a written report and recommendations to the panel for that first phase of work by Nov. 15, with the committee potentially issuing its own recommendations to the Legislature a month later. Similar deadlines are set for reporting and recommendations on the second phase in 2027.

It’s not certain the committee will convert what Pew provides into its own recommendations for the 2027 session, said House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle, one of three co-chairs. Chapman-See and Sen. June Robinson, D-Everett, are the others.

“Time will tell,” he said. “I do think that we will get information that helps us prioritize, especially if we have to make reductions and where to start with those.”

This story is republished from the Washington State Standard, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that provides original reporting, analysis and commentary on Washington state government and politics.