Our work in Olympia was about listening to the concerns of people across Washington, and making the best choices to balance our budget.

We are well ahead of where we’d otherwise be if the Legislature had simply convened in January. The decisions we make in the weeks ahead will determine the availability of health care services to seniors, the college opportunities open to our students, and the quality of our kids’ educational experience. Those decisions deserve time and consideration, and we will give them that.

Our responsibility as elected officials is to put our constituents first and foremost. That means following the democratic process of hearing from the many people whose lives might be changed by the cuts; looking beyond the governor’s proposal for missed alternatives; and collaborating with our House and Republican colleagues to build the consensus necessary to pass the budget.

We have made a substantial down payment of $497.7 million against the overall $2 billion budget problem through a combination of cuts, transfers and delayed payments. This is an important step in writing a budget, and it was taken in a bipartisan fashion with overwhelming support. The solution includes:

• Maintenance Level change, $96.5 million. This is mostly accounting for lower-than-expected health care costs in the current biennium.
• Policy Level changes, $226.4 million. These are actual changes in policy that reduce our costs. Although the actual cuts to service are in this section, there are also accounting changes.
• Fund Transfers, $106.2 million. These are unspent funds and money being moved into the general fund, mostly savings agencies have racked up by tightly managing their budgets.
• Unclaimed Property, $50.6 million. The state would sell unclaimed securities (stocks, bonds) immediately, rather than in three years, reimbursing those that later claim the property with the net proceeds.

The decisions we made in special session were significant. Our actions included the delay of increased services to the seriously mentally ill, which will impact their families and communities. And we reduced hundreds of jobs in a time when our communities need more, not fewer, paychecks.

Our challenge is to navigate our state through this recession. We must chart a responsible course – one that meets our constitutional obligations to our kids, our moral responsibility to our most vulnerable citizens and our economic imperative to get people back to work.