Today's headlines:
- Gov. Bob Ferguson isn't onboard with Washington Democrats' newly proposed millionaire tax, but he's open to negotiations—unlike many Republicans.
- Idaho Republicans want to allow citizens to take advantage of federal tax changes, but it'll cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in the face of a projected deficit.
- Kootenai County detention deputies racked up more than a year's worth of overtime hours...in just one month.
- Snow pack in Washington is at its third lowest level in recorded history.
Plus, Washington made it harder for Child Protection Services to separate children from their families. But has the state gone too far? KUOW's Eilís O'Neill spent a year investigating whether the policy change has put more children at risk.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Scott Greenstone, James Dawson, Eliza Billingham, John Ryan, Eilís O'Neill and Owen Henderson.
The show is hosted and produced by Owen Henderson.
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TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Wednesday, February 4, 2026.
On today’s show, we walk through the details of a proposal from Washington Democrats to tax people who make more than a million dollars a year. Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson says it’s a good starting point but he wants changes, while Republican lawmakers lambasted the idea.
Plus, Idaho lawmakers are looking to make budget cuts. But they’re also approving bills to conform with federal tax changes that would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
And Washington changed its policies around child protective services to keep more kids with their families. Critics say more children are dying as a result, but reform advocates say it’s more complicated. We’ll talk with Eilis O’Neill about what she found during a year-long investigation.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
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Washington Democratic leaders have formally introduced a new proposal to tax the income of people who make more than a million dollars a year.
Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen says the money raised would provide new revenue for things like health care and public schools.
JAMIE PEDERSEN: “We have a broken upside-down tax system that we have been stuck with for 90 years. We have a generational opportunity in front of us to change that trajectory and to make the whole system fairer.”
OH: The proposal exempts the first million dollars of income.
Republicans like Senate Minority Leader John Braun panned the idea.
JOHN BRAUN: “As I read it, this is a tax that starts with a certain group, very much, in my view, an attack on small and medium-sized businesses. They’re going to damage our economy and, ultimately, set the stage for driving up affordability for everyone.”
OH: Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson says he supports the concept of a millionaires’ tax, but he says the bill needs more work before he’d sign it.
He says it doesn’t divert enough money to programs that specifically help middle- and low-income residents.
BOB FERGUSON: "A significant percentage of these revenues must go back into the pocket of Washingtonians. The current proposal is not close to achieving that important objective."
The bill would cut sales taxes on personal hygiene products like deodorant, shampoo and toothpaste.
And five percent of the revenue raised would go to fund public defenders for low-income defendants.
Democrats say they were surprised by the governor’s public reaction but will work with him.
If the measure passes, about 30,000 of the state’s richest residents would be subject to the new income tax.
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Newly proposed spending cuts could permanently trim between $15 million and $30 million from Idaho’s budget.
James Dawson has more on yesterday’s announcement.
JAMES DAWSON: Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee co-chair, Rep. Josh Tanner, has been clear for weeks that he wants a structurally balanced budget.
JOSH TANNER: “Instead of just more Band-aid style and just hopes and prayers that we’re going to come out of this in a really quick way.”
JD: He’s referring to Gov. Little’s proposed spending plan, which largely relies on using interest income and holding off on local road grants for a year to keep the state’s books in the black.
But state agencies have warned deeper cuts on top of the 3% they slashed this year could end critical health services for vulnerable Idahoans.
Democratic Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking.
JANIE WARD-ENGELKING: “These cuts are going to be below the maintenance level for our agencies and that really bothers me because I don’t know that this keeps the lights on.”
JD: K-12 Education, state police, prisons and Medicaid are currently exempt from further cuts. JFAC will begin voting on these potential cuts on Friday.
James Dawson, Boise State Public Radio News.
OH: You can find a full breakdown of these proposed cuts here.
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Blink and you’ll miss it. Idaho House lawmakers yesterday [TUES] passed the latest bill conforming to federal tax changes.
If signed by the governor, it would cost the state 155 million dollars this fiscal year and another 175 million dollars next year.
House Democrats all voted against it. Minority Leader Ilana Rubel says Idaho can’t afford it after the state has already cut critical programs.
ILANA RUBEL: “Families of kids with disabilities who have lost their nursing care, people have lost their mental health care. We can’t stick them with more of this right now because, really, for many families in Idaho this is going to drive them into ‘One Big Beautiful Bankruptcy.’”
OH: Supporters, however, say it’s not fair for Idahoans to miss out on tax breaks for tips and overtime pay.
A Senate committee will consider the bill next.
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Detention deputies for the Kootenai County jail racked up more than a year’s worth of overtime hours in the first month of 2026.
They’ll be out of budgeted overtime expenses by the end of February.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham reports.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: In January alone, Kootenai County jail staff logged more than 2,600 overtime hours. That’s equivalent to 65 40-hour work weeks.
Captain Jeremy Hyle says that’s 1,000 hours less than previous months.
JEREMY HYLE: “October was 3600 hours…November was 3121, December was 2510, and January was 2630.”
EB: Hyle says the Kootenai County sheriff’s office is 16 detention deputies away from being fully staffed.
For most of last year, they were missing nearly twice that number of full-time positions.
State law requires 13 staff to man each jail floor at any given time.
The sheriff’s office says they can only reduce overtime hours so much with their current staff.
Kootenai County Commissioners said they’d have to find some way to pay for the legally mandated hours.
They said they would look at how to be more accurate in next year’s budgeting process so that the proper amount of money is allocated for the required hours.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: The Pacific Northwest’s all-important snowpack is in bad shape.
Snow volumes in Washington state are barely half of normal. In Oregon, that number falls to less than a third.
Karin Bumbaco is Washington’s deputy state climatologist.
KARIN BUMBACO: “It's looking really bleak, in fact. As of February 3, we're at the third lowest snowpack statewide since records began in 1985.”
OH: Bumbaco says Washington has been consistently warmer than normal since October, often turning snow into rain.
Last year, the state had its warmest December in more than a century of record keeping.
Ski areas are feeling the heat now, with many chair lifts not running for lack of snow.
And by this summer, the missing snowpack could result in water shortages for irrigation and salmon and dried-out forests prone to wildfires.
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Research shows that unnecessarily taking a child from their home can cause harm and lead to poorer outcomes later in life.
That's part of the reason why over the last few years Washington state put policies in place to make it harder for child protective services to separate families. But some critics say the changes go too far and they leave children in dangerous homes.
KUOW's Eilís O'Neill has spent nearly a year talking to families and investigating these policy changes.
But first, a note to listeners that this story does discuss death and may not be suitable for children.
Eilís, thanks so much for joining me.
EILÍS O’NEILL: Thanks for having me
OH: So first, can you give us some background on the policies that the state changed to keep families together?
EO: Yeah, there were two big policy changes. The first had to do with hospitals. So hospitals previously would call CPS if an infant or newborn tested positive for drugs, like their mom was using drugs during pregnancy, or if they tested positive for a medication that helped their mom stay off drugs during pregnancy.
So the state rolled out a tool so that social workers and healthcare providers at hospitals can double check, do I need to call CPS about this family given the characteristics of the family or whatever the concern was?
The second big policy change is called the Keeping Families Together Act, and state lawmakers passed that in 2021, although it technically didn't come into force till 2023.That made two big changes.
First, it set a baseline. It said child welfare workers have to prove that this child is at imminent risk of physical harm before the courts will sign off on removing that child from their family.
Also, the courts need to consider as well the harms of family separation.
The second reason the state changed its policies is it just simply is a fact that Black and Native American kids are more likely to be taken away from their families than kids of other races. And that is a reason to try to reduce bias in the system and make sure that kids are being taken from their families for safety only and not because of any underlying bias.
OH: So you reported that fewer families in Washington have been separated since these policy changes went into effect, but critics say that now more children have died. Can you explain what the data shows?
EO: Yeah, so there are the people who say, well, the law changed, and more children have died since, so it must be because of the law, but the state department in charge of child welfare says, actually, if you zoom out a little bit, deaths were increasing even before the Keeping Families Together Act, and that is because of the opioid crisis.
Also, the year the most kids died after being investigated by child welfare workers was actually 2012, and at that point, Washington state was taking nearly twice the number of kids from their parents as it does today, so it's not clear that increasing child removal increases child safety.
OH: Tell us a little bit more about the families that you met during the year you spent reporting this. We'll start with Mariah.
EO: Mariah was deep in heroin addiction when she got pregnant the first time. She delivered at the hospital. CPS came, took her baby away.
Her second pregnancy, she really wanted to keep the baby. She went into treatment. She got clean.
She went on a medication that helped her stay off drugs. Her infant, her newborn, tested positive for that medication and called CPS. CPS came and took her second baby away also.
She really spiraled when even getting clean didn't mean that she could keep her baby. CPS took her third baby as well, but then by the time she was pregnant with her fourth child, the law had changed.
The Keeping Families Together Act had come into force, and the hospitals were calling CPS less often. During her fourth pregnancy, went into treatment, got clean, went on a medication that helped her stay off drugs. In that case, the hospital did not call CPS.
She said that she was able to keep her baby, and she said that she felt like that was God answering her prayers, that she had prayed for another chance to be a mother and that God had given her that chance.
OH: You also spoke with people who lost loved ones after these policies went into effect. Tell us a little bit about their story.
EO: Yeah, I spoke to Danette Scott, who's a grandmother, and her daughter and her baby granddaughter were living with her when her daughter relapsed and started doing drugs again, and Scott was very worried, called CPS, tried to get custody of her grandchild.
CPS came and said, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. The child doesn't seem to be at imminent risk of physical harm, and they did not give her custody. Her daughter and granddaughter eventually left her home, and she found out later that her granddaughter died of exposure to fentanyl at 13 months old.
Scott blames the Keeping Families Together Act for her granddaughter's death and believes that if that act had not passed, that she would have gotten custody and her granddaughter would still be alive.
OH: So it sounds like there are some really tragic stories on both sides of the arguments over this policy. What are some suggestions about where the state goes from here?
EO: Well, the answer to that depends on who you ask. There are some who, like Danette Scott, want to get rid of the Keeping Families Together Act.
There are a large number of people who say the state needs more child welfare workers, and that way everyone would have lower caseloads and be able to really address the needs of the families they're working with and identify any safety problems that are there.
Another option that some people like are safety plans, where the state doesn't remove a child but makes a plan with the family about how to keep the child safe within the context of whatever's going on, addiction or anything else.
And then there are those who say that the answer does not lie in the child welfare system at all.
So I spoke to one advocate of child welfare reform. He's a lawyer named Adam Ballout, and he says we're kind of looking in the wrong place for answers.
ADAM BALLOUT: The solutions for this crisis aren’t necessarily very sexy. They involve funding resources. They involve funding housing, making treatment available for families that need it and expanding access to treatment, safe storage.
EO: And then Ballout says he also says that parents don't necessarily feel safe talking to CPS workers about their problems, so it's needed is someone else who doesn't have the power to separate families to offer help to families and find out what they need and also what their safety concerns are themselves.
OH: Eilís O'Neill covers health at our partner station, KUOW. Eilís, thank you so much for sharing this reporting with us.
EO: Thanks so much for having me.
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OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Scott Greenstone, James Dawson, Eliza Billingham, John Ryan, Eilís O’Neill and me, Owen Henderson. I’m also the host and producer.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
