Governor Gregoire calls for a special session

Governor Gregoire announced last week that she will call the legislature into special session on November 28, after the next revenue forecast in mid-November, to deal with the state’s looming budget problems.

At an appearance at the annual meeting of the Association of Washington Busines, Governor Gregoire told the audience she has been told by the state’s chief economist and revenue forecaster to expect a further reduction in tax revenues in the mid-November forecast. If so, the budget hole for the state’s $32.0 billion budget could reach $2.0 billion.

This link will take you to a Seattle Times story on the special session:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016279434_session22m.html

(If they are looking for a way to capture more sales tax, I would humbly suggest that they look at expanding the cruising permit to out-0f-state entity-owned vessels. The uptick this would bring is staggering:

241 cruising permits were issued in 2010. All were out-of-state residents who owned their boats individually. The assumption for the following numbers is that 241 cruising permits would be issued to out-of-state entity-owned boats.

$17 M: That’s the amount that these entity-owned boats from out-of-state would spend

29.8 M: That’s the amount of the direct ($17 M), indirect ($4.5 M) and induced ($8.2 M) that would be generated w this expansion.

313: That’s the total employment impact of changing this legislation. That’s $12 M in total labor income impact.)