Today's headlines:
- WA declares a fourth consecutive statewide drought. The state Ecology director says snowpack will be unreliable in the future.
- Washington has the second-biggest gender pay gap in the U.S. Is there anything the state can do about it?
- STA says its all but certain federal dollars are coming to cover half the cost of bus rapid transit on North Division.
- Northwest climbing icon and first US man to summit Everest Jim Whittaker dies at 97.
Plus, Idaho started its legislative session this year with a projected budget shortfall. From our partner station Boise State Public Radio, James Dawson joins to look back at what lawmakers accomplished, now that they’ve gaveled out their 2026 stint in the Capitol.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Anna King, Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick, Kirsten Kendrick, James Dawson and Owen Henderson.
The show is hosted and produced by Owen Henderson.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Thursday, April 9, 2026.
On today’s show, it’s the fourth year in a row environmental officials have declared a statewide drought in Washington. And scientists say this may just be the state’s new normal.
Plus, Washington has the second highest gender wage gap in the country. Why?
And Idaho started its legislative session this year with a projected budget shortfall. We look back at what lawmakers accomplished, now that they’ve gaveled out their 2026 stint in the Capitol.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
The heads of several Washington state agencies gathered near Yakima yesterday to declare a statewide drought.
NWPB’s Anna King has more.
ANNA KING: Snowpack is declining in the Northwest. That’s according to Casey Sixkiller, the director of Washington’s Department of Ecology.
And it’s creating trouble for communities, farmers, and fish.
He says snowpack droughts will only become more frequent in the future.
So, Washington and its residents need to get better prepared soon.
CASEY SIXKILLER: “The world around us is changing much more rapidly than our infrastructure is prepared to handle. That the way in which we’ve managed water historically can adapt to. And that is both the challenge and the opportunity that we have going forward.”
AK: Sixkiller says despite severe flooding in some areas over the winter, things are drying out across nearly every watershed in Washington.
I’m Anna King.
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OH: Today is Equal Pay Day for Asian American women.
It marks how far into 2026 those women have to work to earn the same amount white men did in 2025.
Black, Latina and Indigenous women’s equal pay days are much further into the year.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham has more on what’s driving the gap in Washington and how the state can fix it.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Washington’s wage gap is the second highest in the nation, behind Utah and just ahead of Idaho.
Washington women, on average, make 18 and a half thousand dollars less than Washington men.
For Asian women, it’s closer to 13 thousand. For Latina women, it’s nearly 40.
Brittany Gregory is the executive director of the Washington State Women’s Commission. She says concentrations of high earners, like Washington’s tech sector, can exaggerate pay gaps, but…
BRITTANY GREGORY: “You have states like New York or California that also have really high-paying industries, right? But we don't see the same pay equity disparities, and so there must be something specific about what we're doing in Washington.”
EB: She says the state’s out-of-control prices for childcare might force some women to work just part-time.
Gregory is also working with private companies to get them to publish pay transparency data and narrow salary ranges on job postings.
While the commission offers salary negotiation training, Gregory says wage gaps are the result of wider systemic issues and undercover biases.
She says it’s not that women aren’t sticking up for themselves.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: Spokane Transit is inching closer to securing some of the money it needs for its Division Street Bus Rapid Transit project.
Chief Executive Karl Otterstrom says a federal agency gave the project a “medium high” rating.
That means STA is now virtually guaranteed to collect an 82-million-dollar grant.
Agency officials are doing the work needed to finish the application process.
And Otterstrom says, assuming all goes as planned, STA plans to begin work in 2028 to improve bus travel conditions on North Division.
KARL OTTERSTROM: “There has been transit on that corridor almost continuously since 1890 with streetcars going up to the Lidgerwood neighborhood, and this is a way to enhance the quality, to provide a platform for more frequent service, and to make it part of a future development of that corridor.”
OH: Otterstrom says Spokane Transit will create transit-specific lanes and install signs to give passengers accurate arrival information in real-time.
He says half of the projected $166 million cost will be paid by the federal government and about a quarter by the state.
Most of the rest will come from Spokane Transit’s savings.
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Northwest climbing icon Jim Whittaker has died at the age of 97.
In 1963, the Seattle native became the first American to summit Mount Everest.
Whittaker talked about his historic climb in an interview for Seattle Colleges Cable TV.
JIM WHITTAKER: “Everest was a real shocker because I didn’t know it would be as well publicized. We came back and there was a ticker tape parade in Seattle. Suddenly there was the world news. It was written up in Time magazine, and we went back and got a gold medal—I got a gold medal from President Kennedy. It opened up all kinds of doors.”
OH: Whittaker also helped build REI into a major cooperative.
And he was recognized for his leadership in environmental conservation and outdoor education.
Whittaker's twin brother, Lou, was also a renowned climber. Lou passed away in March 2024.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
It's that time of year. State legislatures have adjourned for the rest of 2026, barring any special sessions.
Washington legislators wrapped up their work last month, and Idaho lawmakers adjourned late last week.
We already brought you a look back at what Washington's senators and representatives accomplished and what's still on the docket for next year.
And now my next guest is here to do the same for the Gem State.
James Dawson covers politics at our partner station, Boise State Public Radio. James, thanks for being here this morning.
JAMES DAWSON: Hey, thanks for having me on.
OH: So just like in Washington, budget shortfall was the main issue dominating a lot of the session.
What was the situation heading into this legislative session? And how did lawmakers want to deal with it?
JD: Yeah, so kind of pretty much after we started the new fiscal year, July 1 of 2025, there were some troubling numbers coming out every month from the state's revenue side.
So by December, we were staring down this massive revenue shortfall. Total deficit was only projected at about $40 million.
But the revenue at the time was down more than $460 million from expectations.
So revenue did eventually rebound later that month. But the picture still wasn't great for the rest of the legislative session.
Governor Brad Little, in response to those falling numbers last summer, had implemented 3% holdbacks for most state agencies.
During his budget presentation, he had proposed mostly using these one-time funds and kind of interest income, along with dropping funding for local transportation projects to balance the budget.
You had the brand new House Budget Committee co-chair, Rep. Josh Tanner, calling them kind of gimmicky, not really enjoying what the governor had put forth. And so the legislature had other ideas.
They eventually settled on cutting the current year budget by a total of 4%. So that's 1% on top of the 3% holdbacks, and then 5% making those 3% holdbacks permanent for the upcoming fiscal year to make up the revenue difference.
OH: And you mentioned falling revenue, but why was the state losing revenue? What was causing this deficit?
JD: Yeah, it's a good question. Just like with any other economic projection, you have a lot of going into it.
One of the biggest, of course, was the $450 million tax cut package that lawmakers pushed through last year.
Governor Brad Little still signed it, despite telling us in the press just a few weeks beforehand that the state could only afford $200 million in tax cuts—so more than doubling that.
Supporters of the cuts really are saying we have to let the tax cuts actually work to grow the economy.
Eventually, because of these tax cuts, corporations will hire more people then, meaning more people will have more money to spend in the economy for sales tax slash they're earning more money that they can collect in income tax revenue.
OH: And you touched on this briefly when talking about Rep. Josh Tanner and the governor, but these spending bills that were being debated and passed over the course of the session resulted in some very visible fracturing of the Republicans who run Idaho's state government.
JD: Yeah, I mean, the best way to think about it is you have a couple buckets.
You have the moderate Republicans and the fiscal hawks, and even that is kind of oversimplifying it because I would say the moderate Republicans are still very conservative.
They still will cut what they think isn't working within state government, but they believe that there is a set of baseline services that the state needs to provide.
So these additional cuts were pretty steep. We saw a whole lot of debate over this, budgets being rejected because the cuts are too deep.
Even bill sponsors, for example, not really selling the bill too well on the floor, being like, ‘This isn't transparent. You're not going to find where this money is. And, you know, we're barely keeping the lights on. But please vote for it.’
OH: Besides all the budgeting, the legislature did deal with some other things this session, but lots of those bills didn't quite make it across the finish line. Talk to me about some of those.
JD: Yeah, I would say there are a lot of things left on the table.
Immigration, for example, there were several bills out there that would have required local law enforcement to partner with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement on certain things.
You have one of the biggest things that I've been looking at and expect to come back next year is anti-discrimination ordinances for local cities and counties.
There was a bill that would have completely gotten rid of those, essentially preempting them and making the state's anti-discrimination law the preeminent one, which does not include protections for, you know, a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.
We've had a problem with our presidential primary here.
We had a caucus during the most recent presidential election that not a lot of people liked.
You had military members, people on religious missions couldn't submit absentee ballots for, right?
So that's a problem that still needs to get solved. So lots of things still left on the table.
OH: James, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us through the session and this morning. Appreciate it.
JD: Yeah, happy to. Thanks, Owen.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Anna King, Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick, Kirsten Kendrick, James Dawson and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
