3.18.16

Suggested lead:   A top Democrat in Olympia says there's been some budget progress, and he's hopeful things will be wrapped up before Easter.  Dan Frizzell has that story.

Wrap (1:40 total):  It's the end of the first full week of the special session in Olympia, an overtime that was called when majority House Democrats and the Republican Senate reached the end of the 60-day regular session without agreem,ent on a midcourse adjustment to the bipartisan two-year spending plan OK'd last year.  By all reports they're only a couple of hundred million dollars apart on actual spending -- a figure that translates to just barely half a penny for every dollar in that current budget.  With a difference that small, it's apparent that values and priorities, not just dollars and cents, are at the heart of the impasse.  House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan is a key participant in ongoing budget talks, and we caught up with him between negotiating sessions.

SULLIVAN:  "This is a supplemental budget, but it's the budget that'll move our state forward for the next year.  It impacts those who are suffering from mental illness, it affects our education system, homeless people across this state . . . these are all critical areas.  We've made some progress, I think there's hope that we can get things wrapped up fairly quickly in the next week.  Before Easter would be a great time to get that budget done.  There's no reason why we can't sit down at the negotiating table and get an agreement, knowing that both sides are going to have to compromise.  But again, the focus is on making sure the work that we do, and the impacts it has on our communities, that it's done in a way that moves our state forward, and not backwards." [:37]

Sullivan, a Democrat from Covington, said he and his fellow House negotiators will remain at the Capitol over the weekend, prepared to continue negotiations if Senate leaders are willing to talk.  Once the two chambers agree, lawmakers could vote on the budget, send it to Governor Inslee, and adjourn, all within a couple of days time. In Olympia, I’m Dan Frizzell.

 

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