(The Center Square) – The City of Spokane approved an emergency ordinance on Monday, formally adopting a biennial budget model after Mayor Lisa Brown proposed the shift last month.
The move follows the Municipal Biennial Budget Act, which allows cities to adopt the model as long as its ordinance is enacted at least six months before the next biennium. Spokane made that deadline by less than a week, allowing it to initiate the new budget cycle starting in 2025.
Under the model, Spokane’s Finance Department will compile a new budget every two years rather than annually. The shift coincides with an effort to balance the books ahead of next year as Spokane grapples with an approximately $50 million structural deficit.
“This on its own isn’t going to solve anything,” Councilmember Michael Cathcart said. “You still have to be fiscally conservative and responsible, and thinking things through and planning, but I think it’s a device that really forces us to consider the ramifications of all of our decisions.”
Cathcart has advocated for the shift to a biennial budget for the past few years. He pushed for an ordinance toward the end of former Mayor Nadine Woodward’s last term that would have made the transition and most recently pitched the idea to Brown’s administration earlier this year.
Biennial budgets are known to save time and resources that the city would otherwise use to compile one annually. The model also allows municipalities to strategically invest resources over a longer period, generating, in turn, longer projections based on those allocations.
Spokane’s ordinance also provides a section on Mid-Biennial Review and Modification, similar to its current format. This allows for a mid-year review to identify any needed corrections, which the City Council can adopt as soon as eight months into the first fiscal year.
However, another section allows the Council to adopt a special budget ordinance at any time as long as they thoroughly explain what constitutes the emergency.
The only person voting against the shift to a biennial model was Councilmember Jonathan Bingle, who almost always opposes emergency ordinances.
Bingle noted that Cathcart, who ironically pushed for the biennial shift, also advocated for another ordinance over the past few months, except that measure intends to put stricter guardrails on passing emergency ordinances.
He thanked Cathcart and Brown for their efforts and acknowledged the model’s benefits. Still, Bingle said this ordinance should have reached the Council sooner.
“One of the things we just worked so hard on was how do we not have emergency ordinances that aren’t emergencies,” Bingle said. “To me, this emergency ordinance is something where had we had it in, in time, it could have gone through the proper channels … and still been passed.”
The City Council will convene on July 8 to adopt needed corrections to the 2024 budget, and the Finance Department will begin drafting the 2025-2026 biennial budget over the coming months.
