2.24.16

Suggested lead:   House Democrats and Republicans alike endorsed a bipartisan construction spending plan Wednesday at the state Capitol.  Dan Frizzell has that story.

Wrap (:70 total):  It was a day of contrasts Wednesday in Olympia.  On one side of the rotunda, Senate Republicans proposed an apparently party-line operating budget that slashes funding for a number of public services.  At the same time on the House side, Republican and Democratic lawmakers stood together to announce a bipartisan construction budget along with related legislation that would invest a billion dollars over the next 10 years to build schools throughout the state.  Representative Steve Tharinger, the Dungeness Democrat who chairs the House Capital Budget Committee, spoke to reporters during a noontime news conference.

THARINGER:  "I want to emphasize that this is a bipartisan effort.  We've worked hard to find agreement, and in a supplemental year when there isn't a lot of dollars around, I think we've done a good job of focusing on the crises that we face, particularly in classroom limitation, mental-health needs, and infrastructure needs, across the state." [:20]. 

The supplemental budget proposal, which fine-tunes the two-year capital budget approved in 2015, received a public hearing Wednesday afternoon and is expected to be approved by the full House early next week.  In Olympia, I’m Dan Frizzell.