OLYMPIA -- While the Legislature has a busy schedule of votes over (mostly) noncontroversial bills, the real attention today is on the revenue forecast.

It's out, and it's a good news, bad news kind of thing: Bad news that it's down, good news that it's only down slightly; bad news that when coupled with increased demand for state services, the overall impact is that the state has a gap of about $2.8 billion between what it can expect to take in and what it would have to pay out if all the current programs and services were to continue under current schedules.

The final good news is that Gov. Chris Gregoire and the leaders in the Legislature have been waiting for this forecast before releasing new budget requests. So that will start as early as next week.

Whether that's good news or bad news depends...on what they propose, and what you want in or out of the budget.

For the news story on the revenue forecast, click here.

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