The state's institutions of higher education are a vital component of the future economic prosperity of our state. In order to ensure that Washington continues to be able to provide a highly qualified workforce that can attract businesses and support the economic vitality of the state, it is the intent of chapter 18, Laws of 2003 1st sp. sess. to provide new money for capital projects to help fulfill higher education needs across the state.

This new source of funding for the critical capital needs of the state's institutions of higher education furthers the mission of higher education and is intended to enhance the abilities of those institutions, over the next six years, to fulfill their critical roles in maintaining and stimulating the state's economy.

It is the intent of the legislature that this new source of funding not displace funding levels for the capital and operating budgets of the institutions of higher education. It is instead intended that the new funding will allow the institutions, over the next three biennia, to use the current level of capital funding to provide for many of those urgent preservation, replacement, and maintenance needs that have been deferred. This approach is designed to maintain or improve the current infrastructure of our institutions of higher education, and simultaneously to provide new instruction and research capacity to serve the increasing number of traditional college-aged students and those adults returning to college to update skills or retrain so that they can meet the demands of Washington's changing workforce. This new source of funding may also be used for major preservation projects that renovate, replace, or modernize facilities to enhance capacity/access by maintaining or improving the usefulness of existing space for important instruction and research programs.