Looks like rain to me.

It would help to know a few more facts like the size of the rainy day fund now, how much is going into it currently, how long it would last compared with how long this financial rainy day is projected to last. On the face of it it would seem time to start using it - can you delve a bit deeper in to the stats??

Yea, some more info would be good. If the rainy day fund has enough to cover the short fall, or even half the short fall. It makes since.

It's not a good time to dip into the so-called rainy day fund. But, that's irrelevant. They'll do it anyway. To the politicians in Washington State, especially the tax and spend liberals, every day is a rainy day. They believe that they can not spend, and waste, our money fast enough. They believe that if they aren't wastefully spending our money all the time then they're not doing their jobs.

how can there be a rainy day fund with budget short fall

If my checking account is overdrawn they take from saveings

Using rainy day savings to resolve a budget deficit is the last thing that should be done, only when the recession is showing signs of easing and good times are ahead. Using savings for the first sign of a budget deficit is like wiping out your personal savings to pay for groceries instead of turning off your cell phone and cable tv when you lose your job. Stupid!

Ok - if it's not okay to use it now...what exactly would it take? It's called a 'rainy day fund' for a very good reason - it's an emergency fund when things are down and the state could use a little help back up. Folks - we haven't just had a few 'rainy' days lately - it's POURING out there! Let's use it to help balance the budget so that critical programs and services can continue to operate at their present funding so more and more people don't continue to fall through the cracks.

How much in the "rainy day" accounts? Great question! I wish I could say finding the answer was easy, but it wasn't.
As of October of 2008, Washington's Rainy Day Fund totalled about 442 million dollars. Not enough, certainly, to get us through times like this -- but still.
Oregon's newly created rainy day fund, as of this summer totalled 300 million dollars.

I live in California right now and if Washington can avoid what California has gotten it's self into I would say now is the time to dip into the rainy day funds. The state of California can't even afford to pay tax returns to residents and is instead issuing IOU's. A lot of why the state goes into debt is because politicians or the people, vote to do unnecessary projects. For example, here in California we just voted on a bill to make a public transportation system from San Fransisco to San Diego. The state wanted to issue 60 million dollars in bonds to draw up plans. Thats not even ground work! Money that no one has right now. Wow!!!