Awash in cash, the legislature is dramatically increasing spending. That doesn’t absolve them of spending money wisely. There are several areas where proposed budgets could be improved to increase salmon populations, reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fires, and live up to promises in existing law.

With the State House and Senate both adopting proposed budgets earlier this week, the negotiations will now begin to produce a final supplemental budget proposal. The budgets are very different, so the negotiations between the chambers will be important.

Here are five areas where budget negotiators can make sure they are creating the most environmental benefit.

Let science guide salmon funding

The House and Senate budgets take very different approaches to funding salmon recovery. The House focuses almost entirely on streamside protections, providing $50 million for a grant program to “protect and restore habitat with a focus on acquiring and restoring riparian habitat…” The Senate approach is much broader, providing $85 million in funding for competitive salmon recovery grants in two buckets – projects larger than $5 million and projects smaller than $5 million. The Senate also provides $50 million for the restoration of the Duckabush Estuary.

The Senate approach of using scientific prioritization through competitive grants is preferable. Riparian protections are important, but so are estuary restoration, floodplain restoration, and other habitat projects. If streamside protections are important, they should be able to compete for funding. The legislature should let the science guide project selection, not politics.

Cancel wasteful and meaningless solar subsidies

Both budgets subsidize small-scale solar in Washington. This is remarkably wasteful and does nothing to reduce statewide CO2 emissions because utilities are already required to be CO2-neutral by 2030. These subsidies don’t change that goal, they just subsidize a particular way of meeting that goal – one that is incredibly expensive and wasteful.

The evidence that this is about rewarding special interests and not the climate is made clear by a provision in the House budget. It requires that when providing solar subsidies, the Department of Commerce must “attempt to prioritize an equitable geographic distribution and a diversity of project sizes.”

In other words, if there are many projects in the relatively sunny Tri-Cities, Commerce must also allocate some of the funding to places like Bellingham and Forks where solar panels are extremely ineffective.

Waste isn’t a side effect. It is literally a requirement.

The Senate budget provides $95 million for solar and battery subsidies for public buildings and public assistance organizations. The budget proviso doesn’t even mention CO2 but justifies the expenditure by saying the grants are for “grid resiliency” and to “provide backup power.”

The legislature could provide electrical backup for public buildings and invest in separate CO2-reduction projects and reach many more buildings than requiring solar and batteries, both of which are very expensive. These grants don’t do anything well – they don’t reduce CO2 emissions, they reach many fewer public buildings than alternative approaches, and they waste money by imposing needless requirements on equitable geographic distribution.

Cancel the grants and spend the money where it can achieve these goals effectively.

Fully fund the Forest Riparian Easement Program

One area that should be funded – but is not – is the elimination of the backlog of reimbursements for the Forest Riparian Easement Program. As part of the Forests & Fish Law, the legislature agreed to reimburse small forest landowners half the value of trees left to buffer streams and provide salmon habitat. Currently, there is a backlog of more than 100 projects that have applied for reimbursement but have not been paid. It is estimated that clearing the backlog would cost about $10 million.

The Senate budget provides only $5 million to help reduce the backlog. The House budget provides nothing.

Family forest landowners were promised that if they set aside trees to protect salmon habitat and keep streams cool, the people of the state (who benefit from the protections) would do their part and pay a portion of the cost. Legislators are breaking that promise at a time when they have billions in extra revenue and could easily afford it.

This broken promise comes at a time when some legislators are hoping to extend the program to agricultural and other lands, promising farmers they will pay part of the bill for stream protections. Why would any farmer believe that promise when legislators can’t even keep existing promises?

The budget needs to fully fund the FREP, live up to the promises that were made, and clear the backlog.

Increase funding to improve the health of Washington’s forests

Last year, the legislature committed to increasing funding for thinning and other efforts to improve the health of Washington’s forests, making them more resilient. Legislators committed to providing increased funding for eight years. Both supplemental budgets offer the funding for the first biennium. The significant increase of taxpayer revenue in the budget offered an opportunity to accelerate that work. Unlike other areas where additional funding has been proposed, the budgets added nothing to this important priority.

Wildfire reduction would be good for wildlife habitat and reduce the health impacts of annual smoke from summer forest fires.

Legislators should take some of the funding from the needless solar subsidies and fund efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in our forests.

Cancel duplicative funding for EV charging stations

Both budgets include funding to install electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and subsidize the purchase of EVs. The proposed budget in the House offers $25 million. The Senate offers nearly $70 million primarily to install EV charging infrastructure.

There are already several programs that do exactly this, so this added funding is duplicative and unnecessary. The cap-and-trade bill adopted last year has grants for these purposes. So does the low-carbon fuel standard. Utilities also offer incentives to provide vehicle charging stations. Given the many programs that are already designed to address this specific issue and the fact that companies like Tesla are already installing chargers, this funding could easily be spent elsewhere more effectively, either to reduce CO2 emissions or on other environmental priorities.

With so many other sources of funding and incentives to install EV charging stations, this is not an urgent priority and the funding should be put where it can needed now.