House Adds Money For Riverpoint

The state House gave Spokane’s Riverpoint higher education campus a break Wednesday, approving $3.3 million in design money for a second academic building at the site.

The building will house health sciences classes for Eastern Washington University and Washington State University.

“I would have liked to have had them get even more, but I couldn’t squeeze any more out of the budget,” said Rep. Jean Silver, R-Spokane, prime sponsor of the amendment to add the funding.

When the House Republicans’ capital budget was released from the Capital Budget Committee last month, it included only $60,000 in planning money for the project. Riverpoint campus officials initially had requested more than $27 million to complete construction of the second building.

Gov. Mike Lowry’s budget request also included only $60,000 in planning money for the project.

Wednesday’s action pleased Terry Novak, acting director of the Joint Center for Higher Education, which administers the Riverpoint campus.

“Without this money, we’d have lost a lot of momentum,” Novak said.

The House’s capital budget passed Wednesday is far from the end of the budget process. The Senate has not released its capital budget proposal. After it does, a compromise will be hammered out by a conference committee.

If the design money makes it into the final budget, Riverpoint’s new building would be scheduled to open in 1999. The campus’ first classroom building is under construction and should be finished next year, Novak said.

The House also amended the budget Wednesday to allow the state to loan $4 million for renovation of Martin Hall on the campus of Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake.

The building will be used as a juvenile rehabilitation center for 14 Washington counties.

It will house up to 60 juvenile offenders from counties that don’t have room for them now, according to Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-Colville.

To help pay for the projects added to the budget Wednesday, the House also deducted nearly $1.3 million from WSU and EWU maintenance funds.

Spokane Democrats Rep. Lisa Brown and Rep. Dennis Dellwo joined other members of their party in voting against the GOP budget. The final vote was 63-34.

Brown said she opposed the budget because it doesn’t devote enough money to solving overcrowding in state juvenile sites.

“We have a crisis with juvenile facilities,” Brown said. “From a parochial point of view I was glad that we solved the problem for Eastern Washington, but that doesn’t take care of the whole state.”

Still left out of the House Republican budget was a $2 million request from Spokane’s Cheney Cowles Museum to help plan a $50 million expansion to house a collection of Native American art. The city’s request for $4 million to develop a Pacific Science Center at Riverfront Park also was rejected.

Lowry’s budget does not include any money for those projects, either.

His budget request does include $17 million for a combined state office building in Spokane that would house several state agencies currently located in separate buildings. The House budget does not include money for the project.