(bright piano music) (intriguing upbeat music) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Paris Jackson.

The 105-day Washington State legislative session is over.

Lawmakers approved a nearly $78 billion two-year budget to fund schools, state prisons, mental health services, homeless services, and more.

With a tight state pocket book, priorities sometimes divided Democrats and pushed Republicans to protest.

Our new State Politics reporter at Cascade PBS, Laurel Demkovich, breaks down the major takeaways with a new governor leading the state.

This was the first session for Governor Ferguson and the biggest priority for lawmakers was to close that $15 billion budget shortfall.

And that happened.

- So the final deal that they came to is a $78 billion budget for the next two years.

That includes about a little more than $4 billion in new taxes, mostly on wealthy businesses.

There's some changes to the sales tax, and a couple other new ways that they raise revenue.

And then there's about $3 billion in cuts.

So most of that goes to behavioral health, healthcare, and higher education.

And of course there's also new spending, and most of that goes to K-12 education, special ed, and other places mixed throughout.

- [Paris] One of the most debated bills this year was to help the state's housing affordability crisis, and it was to essentially cap rent.

Tell us a little bit more about that bill.

- Yeah, so that was one of the most controversial bills this session and even the last few sessions, it's been around for a couple years.

The final version of that includes a 7% cap plus inflation, each year, on what a landlord can raise the rent for a renter.

So they can only raise the rent 7% plus inflation, up to 10%, so no more than 10.

And that's for most renters in the state.

There's also a 5% rent cap for mobile homeowners, and some limits on late fees, and move-in and security deposit fees.

But that bill has kind of taken a long and winding road.

Even the folks who supported it in the first place weren't necessarily happy with where it ended up.

- What other notable bills passed the session?

- Sure, there's a bill to require permits to purchase firearms, and that includes safety training, and I think it's a five-year permit that you have to apply for before you can purchase a new firearm.

There was also a bill to allow unemployment insurance for striking workers.

So if a worker is on strike, they can get up to six weeks, I believe, of unemployment benefits under this new bill.

What is the next step for Governor Ferguson?

- So, Governor Ferguson has 20 days from when a bill gets to his desk to sign it or veto it.

So that puts him at about mid-May for everything to be, you know, off of his plate.

So he can either sign it as is and put it into law, veto it, or he could just not sign it, and then it would automatically go into law on the effective date listed in the bill.

Ferguson has not been super open about things that he supports, especially some of these contentious bills that we talked about.

So we'll see where he lands on things and how he feels on the overall budget, which again, he has pushed back on in the past.

(playful upbeat music) - On April 23rd, TIME Magazine held its inaugural Earth Awards, recognizing individuals influencing the future of the planet through their work on climate justice awareness and activism.

Among the honorees, former Washington Governor Jay Inslee, actor Rainn Wilson, advocate Catherine Coleman Flowers, and others.

- This is the United States of America, and every one of those states has the capability to advancing clean energy and fighting climate change.

- Inslee was recognized for signing Washington's Climate Commitment Act into law in 2021, and his years-long work on other prominent clean energy legislation.

I'm Paris Jackson, thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit Northwest News.

Go to cascadepbs.org, for more great local coverage.