Olympia Report: This Year's Winners at the Legislature
We offer this selection of victors from this year’s session with the caveat that we know very little about Gov. Bob Ferguson’s enthusiasm for the veto pen, so some of this stuff might take a big hit at the goal line.
The Winners
State employees
One of the largest issues, both politically and budgetarily, that the Legislature had to grapple with this year was whether to fully fund the pay and benefit increases negotiated by former Gov. Jay Inslee’s administration and unions representing the state’s workers.
In the end, most of those workers got all they bargained for, which is a major win for Mike Yestramski, head of the Washington Federation of State Employees, his members, and organized labor writ large. Both Gov. Bob Ferguson and Senate Democrats proposed some form of haircut on those contracts, but House Democrats sided with the unions and ultimately prevailed.
No word on whether Ferguson and Yestramski will hug it out after the labor leader called the governor a “ratfink” for courting the union’s endorsement during his campaign and then proposing a series of unpaid furlough days that would have taken $300 million out of their pockets.
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https://www.postalley.org/2025/05/01/olympia-report-this-years-winners-at-the-legislature/