6.27.17

Suggested lead:   If it’s true that good things come to those who wait, lawmakers in Olympia are about to present Washingtonians with a really great budget. Dan Frizzell has that story.

Wrap (:78 total):  As the clock winds down in Olympia, House and Senate budget negotiators say they’re very near to the handshake that will signal an agreed-to compromise. Democrats control the House and Republicans have a one-vote edge in the Senate, thanks to a lawmaker who calls himself a Democrat but has caucused with the Republicans for several years.  That balance of power led to three special sessions this year, along with the threat of an unprecedented partial government shutdown, but that catastrophe seems to have evaporated at the last minute.  Spokane Representative Timm Ormsby, the head budget writer for the Democrats, downplayed the intrusion of D.C.-style politics of personality in an interview during a break Tuesday afternoon.  

ORMSBY:  "The mood in the budget-negotiating room is good.  There is no animosity or acrimony between any of the negotiators.  We don’t have issues as far as getting along; we have disagreements. Regardless of our personal interactions being favorable with each other, we represent very disparate philosophies, and in order to reconcile that, we’ve both got to compromise. This is what divided government looks like.”  [:23]. 

While the details of the budget are still being finalized, one certainty is that the Legislature will fully fund basic education, satisfying the state Supreme Court’s McCleary order and improving the prospects for Washington’s one-point-one public-school students. In Olympia, I’m Dan Frizzell.