In anticipation of this year’s state budget battle, we put Washington state park’s funding situation this way: If the parks were a local dessert shop, the state would simultaneously be selling worse and worse tasting ice cream and hoping consumers will buy more and more of it. Which was to say, over the past few years the state has adopted a policy of reducing taxpayer dollars for parks and hoping that visitors paying to access the defunded/understaffed/unmaintained state parks would make up the difference.

So, with the budget battle hot and heavy now in Olympia (or rather, clamy and stalled), how are things looking for our woeful parks system? Let’s just say it might be ready to break out the brussels-sprout swirl.

The good news for Washington State Parks is that all sides at the bargaining table want to increase its funding, which since 2009 has seen its general-fund funding go from $94.5 million to $8.7 million. The bad news is that no side of the table even comes close to the $64 million the parks system says it needs to get its affairs in order (read J.P. Squire’s account of his visit to one Washington state park if you want to understand how out of order the affairs have gotten).

The House budget would give the parks system $39 million for the next two years. The Senate budget would give it $15 million. Washington State Parks says the difference between those two proposals amounts to the current operations continuing as they are (with a few small investments here and there) and cutting another 100 employees (they would even say the Senate proposal isn’t really a funding increase, since it doesn’t even account for rising labor costs, etc.)

But here’s what really melts the Parks systems’ popsicle: The Senate budget also assumes that with the reduced staffing, Parks will make $12 million more in Discover Pass sales and other user fees.

Senate budget writers say Parks is misrepresenting their financial plan, which they charactarize as simply being bullish about the parks’ ability to raise revenue through user fees. The House and governor’s budget calls for the Parks to have a strong reserve fund, which the Senate finds unneccesary given healthy Discover Pass sales to date. The Senate is basically saying that the state parks system is about to get a raise, and shouldn’t worry too much about having a lot of money in the savings bank.

Either way, the agency is calling foul, suggesting that the Senate budget would actually cause them to fall short of their projections by $5 million.

“Loss of revenue leads to further employee and service reductions. And the pattern continues, with uncertain results and risks,” the agency says in a press release.

Parks are not alone in not feeling the love from the Senate. As Joel Connelly put it earlier this month, the Senate budget “takes additional revenue coming into state coffers and puts it into education. The rest of state government is kept on Great Recession-era rations.”

However, Connelly added, “State parks, in particular, are denied resources.”

Going into final budget negotations, that puts the Parks system in a hole compared to other agencies that also, obviously, hope for more money.

Maybe Senate projections are correct, and the parks will enjoy a big boost in visits that will pad its coffers. Those Amazon coders do look like they could use a nice hike outdoors.

Or, maybe we should start learning to like brussels-sprout ice cream.