- Ted, welcome back.

The Rhode Island General Assembly's annual legislative session came to a dramatic end in the early hours of Saturday, June 21st.

It's always a long day and a long night for you and other State House reporters.

- Yes, I think I went to bed around 3:00 AM, which is not unusual for any of us who cover the State House on the last night of session.

The General Assembly, they just, they leave so much to the last minute.

I wanna say the House and Senate took roughly 300 roll call votes in less than 12 hours Friday into Saturday.

So for all the reporters, it's just kind of, it's triage, just trying to keep up with that many bills moving that fast in both chambers at the same time.

- Yeah, perhaps no Bill got more attention than the assault weapon ban.

In the end, lawmakers ended up passing a modified measure.

Now it's with the governor for his signature, but certainly not what advocates really wanted.

- No, and it's a little bit of a complicated story, but to try to simplify it, this debate has been going on for years about banning what are, what critics call assault weapons, that phrase is contested, I should note, by Second Amendment advocates.

Finally, this year, for the first time, the House actually passed a full ban on sale purchase possession of these weapons.

But the Senate Judiciary Committee, as has been the case for years, did not have the votes for that.

And then the new Senate President, Val Lawson, who supports the bill personally, refused to go around the Judiciary Committee and put the bill on the floor some other way.

So the top Senate leaders at the last minute came up with a compromise, which was to ban the sale and purchase of those weapons in Rhode Island, but not possession.

The Rhode Island Coalition against gun violence, which is pretty influential up there, they fought all week for the full house ban, but by Friday night, it was clear that the only thing that might pass is the Senate bill and House leaders decided they put that on the floor.

It came up for votes with sort of the argument that something was better than nothing and that this was still progress in their eyes.

- And advocates are already saying that they're going to come back next year and push for an expanded bill that also bans the possession of these firearms.

Now, let's turn to the state budget also making big headlines, an unexpected announcement by Governor Dan McKee on June 25th saying that he would not sign the budget bill that was passed by lawmakers.

He also said he would not veto it, so it will become law without his signature.

This certainly was a surprise to a lot of people.

- Yeah, I mean, I'd say so.

The governor had made some noises toward the end of the legislative session about being unhappy with all the tax and fee increases that state lawmakers had put into the budget.

We talked about some of those last week here on the segment in analytics, the 2 cent increase and the gas tax, the $4 monthly fee on everyone's health insurance plans, the so-called Taylor Swift Tax on million dollar second homes.

But calling a news conference to attack the budget was for McKee a pretty dramatic step?

- Let's listen to what some of the governor had to say at that news conference.

- We didn't have to raise taxes on anyone in this budget.

We could have balanced the budget and met the most important issues that were still on the table with closing some of the gaps that happened after the fact.

I still stand in a position that says, let's tax people when we need to, but when don't need to, hold off until we need to.

- Critics are going as far as saying that this is a PR move for the governor.

That he should have vetoed it if he felt strongly about it.

House Speaker Joe Shekarchi and Senate President Val Lawson both defended the budget in a statement saying that he'd left significant holes for them to fill because of the problems with his initial budget plan.

And also arguing that the tax and fee hikes were needed to pay for healthcare and also transportation.

But it all seems very Rhode Island to the voters, right?

This interesting dynamic that we see at the State House.

- Yeah, I mean, part of why it was surprising is 'cause the governor has really prioritized good relations with the General Assembly for the last four years.

So this felt kind of out of character.

I do think the policy disagreement is real about whether those tax and fee increases are necessary.

But I also, you can't avoid the politics here.

I mean, speaker Shekarchi is being widely discussed as a potential candidate for governor next year.

Well, governor McKee wants to be a candidate for governor next year, and so I do think this was also partly a way to put a little political distance between the two of them, and for McKee to get a little bit of a shot in at Shekarchi, and say, hey, I'm not going anywhere.

- Interesting to see how all of this unfolds.

- [Ted] It will be.

- Thank you for being here, Ted.

- Good to be here.