Fiscal Notes Update: What Is This Feeling?

I’m writing you and your wonderful team with another popular update on the 2025 legislative session and fiscal notes. In weeks 6 and 7, the number of fiscal note requests and assignments nearly matched up with the same weeks in 2023 (to the point of being nearly indistinguishable on our chart). If that pattern holds, we could expect slightly more volume this week and next, as the legislature works to pass bills out of the house of origin (that cutoff is next Wednesday on March 12). We seem to have passed the point where the requests are defying gravity but with more than 1,800 fiscal note requests (as of this morning), we will certainly pass the total volume for 2023 in the next few weeks.

Here’s some observations for the coming weeks:
• With new versions becoming the norm (substitute, 2nd substitute, 2nd engrossed 3rd substitute, etc.), bills subject to I-960 get new assignments for new or increased taxes and fees. As a reminder, these fiscal notes are always prioritized by law.
• If you are assigned just an amendment, the fiscal note should reflect the entire version of the bill the amendment is on, with that amendment applied. If the costs you are writing to were from other parts of the bill, you should still include those and write to them.
• For amendments and substitutes, describe what is different from the previous version(s).
• Bills that have missed one of the cutoffs are considered dead, but necessarily for good. You could see these haunted bills come back as necessary to implement the budget or as a budget proviso in one of the upcoming proposals.

Please feel free to share this email with your team members that could use this information. In addition, we are sending this and other regular fiscal note updates to the Budget Communications topic of GovDelivery. To sign up, visit this link and you can select Office of Financial Management > Budget > Budget Communications.

Thank goodness we have you and your team doing all you do for Washington. If you have any questions, feel free to just reach out to your OFM Budget Advisor, the OFM Budget Operations team or myself.

Thank you,

 

Steven Puvogel | Lead Budget Advisor

Budget Division - Operations

Office of Financial Management

He/Him

(C) 360-701-6459 or Teams