The Finance, Administration, and Communications Committee of the Whole met on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 4:30 PM. The committee reviewed seven agenda items, including a federal lobbyist update, several consent agenda items, and informational updates on data governance, technology services, and the budget process. Key actions included advancing three items to the May 19 consent agenda and receiving a presentation on federal advocacy priorities.
I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Finance Administration and Communications Committee of the Whole, the Redmond City Council on Tuesday, May 12th, commencing at 4 30 p.m. Council members in attendance include Council President Stewart, Council Vice President Nueva Kamina, Council Members Parcy, Forsythe, Sony, and online. We have Councilmember Progrilla and myself, presiding officer, uh Councilmember Kritzer. On our agenda today, we have seven items. The first item on the agenda is an update with our federal lobbyist. And we have Lizzie Leslie Palner here to be able to give us this update. So I'll turn it over to you. Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so thrilled to be joined by my colleague Joe O'Brien. We have a short PowerPoint. And so Joe's going to share his screen if that's okay. Go ahead. Okay. Terrific. So just to kind of quickly walk through the update, we're going to just start with where we are on federal funding and some of the actions of late around with the administration. We'll talk a little bit about FY27 appropriations and budget reconciliation, which you may be hearing about in the news. Touch on surface transportation reauthorization, as well as legislation impacting housing and homelessness, and then talk briefly on midterm elections and then looking ahead to 2026. So with that, let me start on the next slide. So, you know, as you probably saw in the news, uh, Congress struggled to finalize their FY26 appropriations bills. And just a reminder, these are the bills that essentially fund the government. Um, and there are 12 bills that they deal with each year. This year they couldn't get them finalized in December. It ended up kind of going into going into uh Q1 and Q2, even of this year. And they were finally able to reach agreement with the exception of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and customs and border protection, which of course you've seen in the news. Um and they were unable to reach agreement, and it resulted in a partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. It ended up being the longest shutdown in history. They were finally able to get to some resolution, and the department was able to reopen on April 30th through a compromise that was reached with the House and the Senate, with the exception of funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which of course in DC because we love acronyms CBP. Um they are dealing with funding for those two divisions separately through reconciliation, which I'll talk about in just a moment. Um quick reminder that even through this shutdown, ICE and CBP continued to have funding because of funding that was approved through the reconciliation package that happened last summer. So this is just kind of that was already supplemental funding. This is the normal funding that they would be getting. Uh, what I want to leave you with is um that many of those cuts are unlikely to go through because many of the programs that he's proposing to cut have bipartisan support. Joe, next slide. So with the president's budget that's been introduced, that that sort of kicked off the FY27 appropriations process. And so, you know, as I mentioned, you saw the president introducing his budget, proposing these very draconian cuts for domestic programs, and proposing the largest increase in defense spending, 42%. Um, and again, given how Congress uh treated the budget last year, we anticipate this being the same uh for this year, and that many of these cuts are going to be rejected. The House has started moving along with its appropriations schedule, and they're starting to mark up bills. The Senate is moving at a much slower pace. Um, and that's been pretty typical. And so when the federal fiscal year ends, which is September 30th, it's very likely that Congress will need several continuing resolutions uh before they're able to get final agreement on the FY27 budget. So we're looking at probably seeing a final package somewhere in December, could even be into early next year. Next slide. Um, one piece to note is that as we're going through um the appropriations process, Redmond has submitted uh several projects for community project funding, also known as EARMARCS. And we are so thrilled. Um, we received notice that Congresswoman Dalbene is actually uh has chosen two of our projects to advance to the appropriations committee. Um, and that's the East Side Corridor Urban Airspace Radar Safety uh infrastructure for $772,000. And then also the Fire Station 11 life safety modernization project for $3 million. Um, and so really this is a very important first step.