By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald

Legislators trudged toward the finish of the 2016 session Tuesday night, agreeing on a revised state budget and clearing a path for overturning a stack of vetoes by the governor.

The state House overwhelmingly approved the spending plan and sent it to the Senate where, after arduous and sometimes rancorous debate, it narrowly passed in one of the final key votes before adjournment.

The heavily negotiated plan sailed through the House on a 78-17 then made it through the Senate on a 27-17 margin.

Gov. Jay Inslee, who vetoed 27 bills when lawmakers didn’t pass a spending plan in regular session, lauded their accomplishment Tuesday.

“I appreciate the work of Senate and House budget negotiators to reach a good compromise that legislators were able to support on a bipartisan basis,” he said in a statement.

The supplemental budget will increase overall state spending out of the general fund by $191 million. In addition, it taps emergency reserves to cover the cost of last year’s wildfires.

It will provide millions of new dollars for programs serving the mentally ill, housing homeless youth and assisting foster children. There’s also additional money for training and mentoring teachers.

“We moved on youth homelessness, we moved forward on education, and we moved forward on mental health,” said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, the chief House budget writer.

But proposals pushed by majority House Democrats and Inslee to increase starting pay for new teachers and give an across-the-board pay hike to all teachers did not make the final deal.

Senate Republicans resisted. Teacher compensation should be dealt with in 2017 when lawmakers tackle the outstanding issues in the McCleary school funding lawsuit, they said.

“It’s not everything you want, that’s the nature of a compromise, but I think we can say we did good work,” said Dunshee, who is expected to resign soon to focus full-time on his duties as a Snohomish County councilman.

Republican Sen. John Braun of Centralia, the Senate’s lead negotiator, called it “a good solid budget in a divided government.

But in a heated floor debate in the Senate, a member of Braun’s caucus blasted a lack of transparency in the process that left them unaware of much of the final content.

“We’re voting on something that we have absolutely no idea what’s in it,” said Sen. Brian Dansel, R-Republic, one of two Republicans who voted against the budget.

With power divided between Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate, compromise on spending matters has proved elusive in recent years.

Lawmakers toiled through three special sessions in 2015 before approving a two-year, $38.2 billion budget in time to prevent nonessential state agencies from shutting down.

This year, the majority parties struggled to find common ground on how to supplement that budget to cover the cost of emergencies and unforeseen changes in state government operations.

Regular session ended March 10 without an accord and it took until Monday, the 19th day of special session, to get a deal.

Among the budget’s provisions are $7 million for recruiting new public school teachers and increasing training and mentoring for all instructors and $15 million for programs serving homeless children and families.

There’s $28 million to improve safety of staff and patients at Western State Hospital, one of Washington’s two psychiatric hospitals. Some of the money will go to boost salaries in hopes of improving the recruitment and retention of employees. There is also $10 million for the governor and a panel of lawmakers to decide how to spend to improve care for the mentally ill in hospitals or community settings.

The budget’s treatment of education funding didn’t sit well with a lot of lawmakers.

A court order in the McCleary case requires the state to ease school districts’ reliance on local levies to operate. Language in the budget gave lawmakers an April 2017 deadline.

But some school districts are nervous. They face the loss of millions of local property tax dollars if the Legislature fails to act. School leaders wanted money set aside in the budget to ensure districts would not tumble off this so-called “levy cliff.”

“I’ve heard a lot of people say we have time, we can come back and fix it,” said Sen. Mark Mullet, D-Issaquah, who opposed the budget. “We’re making the next 12 months miserable for the school districts.”

Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, called the budget language an “elegant” solution.

“We are all committed to solving it in the next session,” he said.

Also Tuesday, the House was expected to vote to override Inslee’s vetoes on most, if not all, of those 27 bills. The Senate did so Monday. If the House acts, each of those bills will become law.

• Jerry Cornfield can be reached by calling 360-352-8623 or by emailing to jcornfield@heraldnet.com