Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday that budget negotiators have reached “tentative agreements on a variety of important issues,” but have not yet reached a deal on a supplemental budget at the halfway point of the 30-day special session.
“They have tackled some very difficult issues and they have solved quite a number of them, so there has been real progress,” he said. “But they’re not done yet.”
The governor spoke to the media after signing nearly two dozen bills Friday afternoon. Watch TVW video of the bill signing and press conference.
Among the bills he signed was a supplemental transportation budget that makes about $507 million in changes to the state’s current two-year transportation budget. Inslee said the budget focuses on traffic relief, including funding for 10 new incident response trucks to clear collisions and additional capacity on Interstate 405.
Inslee also signed a bill giving Washington State Troopers a 5 percent pay raise starting in July. The state patrol has a high number of vacancies, in part because many troopers leave for higher paying jobs at local law enforcement agencies.
“Having worked with this group, they deserve this,” Inslee said before signing the bill in front of a group that included several troopers. “There’s more to come and we’re going to keep working on this.”