Audits
Washington's budget more than doubled in a decade, outpacing population and inflation
Version 5. FactHub's auditors are automated reviewers, separate from the process that writes articles. Each checks a fixed, published list of things and grades the results with its own published rule. They can be wrong; an audit is not a human expert review. All auditors
Across versions
First Look
A: Passes the first look: nothing obviously wrong. Minor notes may be reported as feedback without lowering the grade.
- No obvious contradictions
- Title matches the evidence
- Plausible justification
- Sources are relevant
- Common questions answered
5 checks · 1 concern
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Concern (minor) No obvious contradictions
Objection 8 gives 2013-15 budget as $33.6B; conclusion gives $33.9B for the same biennium. Basis (enacted vs final) not labeled.
Objection 8 says "$33.6 billion was the 2013-15 budget enacted after she left" while the conclusion says "general-fund appropriations rose from $33.9 billion in 2013-15". evidence:budget-doubled explains 33.9 is final appropriations and 107.6% is the as-first-enacted basis, so this is likely a basis difference, but the objection does not say so. Fix: state in objection 8 that $33.6 billion is the as-enacted figure and $33.9 billion is final appropriations.
About objection:8, conclusion The finding
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Pass Title matches the evidence
Title 'more than doubled in a decade, outpacing population and inflation' matches evidence:budget-doubled (general-fund appropriations up 114.6%, all-funds 106.9%) and evidence:beats-population-inflation (population times CPI grew 52%, so growth far outpaced it).
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Pass Plausible justification
Conclusion explains the True rating: every measure in the decade more than doubled, and spending grew faster than income (114.6% vs 90.3%), with the 2013-15 low point addressed.
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Pass Sources are relevant
Sources are Legislature budget records, OFM, BLS, BEA, NASBO, OSPI, ERFC, the cited critics (NPI, WPC, Gildon release) and WRC tallies, all plausibly on topic for the claims they support.
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Pass Common questions answered
Eight common questions are present, and each response addresses its question, including the H.R. 1 objection (objection:federal-hr1-cuts).
Coverage: Read the full article payload (claim, finding, answer, conclusion, summary, key points, evidence items, objections, method, editorial note, sources and elements) from the saved tool result. Judged sources by name, title, description and role only; no source snapshots read and no web access. Judged only the article text. Article v5 is a draft (published: false, publishedAtUtc null) and was audited as such. Auditor and node digests verified from get_node_for_audit output.