Today's headlines:
- Washington's new 'millionaire's tax' faces legal challenges led by two previous state attorney generals.
- Washington school superintendent Chris Reykdal lambastes Democrats for cuts to kindergarten prep.
- Far-right blogger Summer Bushnell appeals her civil penalty to the Idaho Supreme Court after jury finds her guilty of defaming north Idaho drag performer.
- Idaho Gov. Brad Little vetoes five bills, including crypto kiosk regulations and looser child care staffing rules.
Plus, in Spokane and across the country, first responders are getting more and more 911 calls for behavioral health crises—sometimes drug-induced, sometimes not. To address the shift, Spokane is now deploying eight co-response teams, pairing mental health experts with officers from the fire department, the police department, and the sheriff’s office. SPR’s Eliza Billingham explores how these teams work and how they fit into a system peppered with gaps.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Sarah Mizes-Tan, Doug Nadvornick, James Dawson, Owen Henderson and Eliza Billingham.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Friday, April 10, 2026.
On today’s show, opponents of Washington’s new income tax on high earners are launching another legal challenge against it.
Plus, Washington’s superintendent of public instruction is still sounding the alarm about budget cuts lawmakers made to early education programs this year.
And Spokane is adding to its behavioral health co-response teams—but people within the treatment ecosystem say dealing with crises is only part of the problem.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
Another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the newly passed income tax on high earners, also known as the “millionaires’ tax,” has been filed in Washington.
State Government Reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan has more.
SARAH MIZES-TAN: The lawsuit says the income tax is unconstitutional based off a nearly 100-year-old ruling that designates all income as property.
The Citizens Action Defense Fund, a conservative watchdog group, is leading the lawsuit. They say because the law doesn’t tax all incomes uniformly, it goes against the state constitution.
Former Washington attorney general Rob McKenna is the group’s attorney.
ROB McKENNA: Washington State can have an income tax if it follows the rules for property taxes, it has to be uniform and no higher than 1 percent.
SMT: The lawsuit was filed with the Klickitat County Superior Court on Thursday. The lead plaintiffs are a builder and the owner of a marketing business who would be subject to the tax.
The Superior Court is expected to uphold the unconstitutionality of the tax, but all eyes will be on the case as it moves to the state Supreme Court which would issue the ultimate ruling.
In Olympia, I’m Sarah Mizes-Tan.
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OH: It’s been nearly a month since Washington legislators gaveled their 2026 session to a close.
But, as SPR’s Doug Nadvornick reports, one statewide official is still angry about a cut to one of his programs.
DOUG NADVORNICK: State school superintendent Chris Reykdal calls a 25% reduction in the Transition to Kindergarten budget “shortsighted.”
The program prepares four-year-old children for kindergarten. Reykdal says more than 150 districts statewide participate.
The legislature’s cuts represent a small percentage of the more-than-one-billion dollars in spending cuts.
But Reykdal says, at the school level, it’s a big deal. He says nearly two thousand children who are eligible will not be able to access the program next year.
He says research shows those kids will be less likely to thrive as they move on in school.
Reykdal, whose office is non-partisan, is a former Democratic legislator.
But his statement specifically criticizes Governor Bob Ferguson and Democratic leaders for making a conscious decision to trim an effective program.
He calls the cuts “a complete failure in public policy.”
I’m Doug Nadvornick reporting.
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OH: A far-right blogger is asking the Idaho Supreme Court to overturn a $1.1 million civil judgment against her after she falsely claimed a drag performer exposed his genitals to children in 2022.
James Dawson reports.
JAMES DAWSON: A jury in 2024 found Summer Bushnell defamed Eric Posey after altering a video recording of his performance at Pride in the Park in Coeur d’Alene to suggest he flashed his genitals at kids. On Thursday, Bushnell told the Idaho Supreme Court the jury was prejudiced against her.
Justice Gregory Moeller says she never backed up that claim, calling it “word salad.”
GREGORY MOELLER: “The allegations in this case of modifying a video and lying about its contents and publicizing it sound pretty serious. Help me understand why it’s not as serious as the jury thought it was."
SUMMER BUSHNELL: "Because I don’t feel like they had the right instructions.”
JD: Bushnell says asking jury members if Posey had proved she defamed him shouldn’t have been allowed. Here’s Justice Robyn Brody.
ROBYN BRODY: “I don’t understand the analysis that you provided in your briefing at all.”
JD: Brody later said it appeared Bushnell used AI to compile her written arguments, which included legal citations that didn’t exist or were misquoted. Bushnell says she did her own research.
Justices will issue their opinion in the case at a later date.
James Dawson, Boise State Public Radio News.
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OH: Idaho’s governor issued his first five vetoes of the year this week.
Brad Little on Wednesday night rejected a bill that would have loosened child care regulations in the state, citing potential danger during emergencies.
Under the vetoed proposal, child care providers’ own kids wouldn’t have counted toward required staffing ratios if the kids were at least five years old.
Another rejected bill would have added safeguards for cryptocurrency kiosks.
While Little called the intent of the measure “commendable,” he said it wasn’t specific enough to actually accomplish its goal of reducing crypto ATM scams.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
In Spokane and across the country, first responders are getting more and more calls for behavioral health crises—sometimes drug-induced, sometimes not.
To address the shift, Spokane now deploys eight co-response teams, pairing mental health experts with officers from the fire department, police department, and sheriff’s office.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham explores how these teams work and how they fit into a system peppered with gaps.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Officer Josh Zuray is responding to his first call one Thursday morning.
[DRIVING AMBI]
He’s an officer with Spokane Police Department’s Behavioral Health Unit, or BHU. A Frontier behavioral health clinician is with him, too.
They’ve gotten a call from someone in an apartment in north Spokane, who says their neighbor has been screaming all night.
Per HIPAA rules, I’m not recording any of this. But once the co-responder team is at the apartment complex, the screaming is confirmed by another neighbor. It’s a woman, they say, and they point to her truck in the parking lot.
Zuray runs the license plate and gets a name.
[TYPING AMBI]
The clinician runs that name through Frontier’s records. “Yep, she’s in the system,” she says.
Zuray runs the name through police records. He sees an arrest he was a part of. “Yep, I remember this woman,” he says.
With the records side by side, the co-responders get a clearer picture of the woman who’s been screaming. She’s been arrested and gone through treatment multiple times. She’s likely fallen off her management plan.
KURTIS REESE: “The biggest thing the co-response gives the community and the benefit of that is it gives the responding teams a holistic look at the individual they're dealing with.”
EB: That’s Captain Kurtis Reese with the Spokane Police Department.
KR: “Frontier can't see what the police history is, and this person might have been contacted 50 times in the last three days. And we can't see the mental health side of it or their charts or anything that's going on. So when you have the two different entities coming together and looking at the holistic person, you can kind of see, ‘Oh, this isn't a police issue. This is definitely a crisis issue with mental health. Or, ‘Maybe this isn’t a mental health issue. Maybe we have some criminal stuff we have to deal with.’ Or whatever that may be.”
Zuray goes up to the woman’s apartment and knocks. Nothing. He tries again. He talks to property management. He spends at least an hour trying to get ahold of someone who isn’t actually doing anything criminal.
Austin Skinner is a deputy with the behavioral health unit in the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.
AUSTIN SKINNER: “Having teams that are designated to handling these situations definitely relieves the pressure from patrol having to go to them. And a lot of crisis calls end up being pretty time consuming calls.”
EB: Zuray goes back to the woman’s door one more time. After a few more attempts, he hears something. She’s mimicking his knocks on an inside wall.
“She’s banging back,” he says. “That’s contact right there.”
Then, suddenly, she’s at the front door, screaming at him without opening it. She tells him to leave, then runs further into the apartment and slams an inside door.
That’s it. Zuray doesn’t have the authority to force his way in. So he and the clinician head back to the car to fill out paperwork. They tell property management to call 988 if she starts screaming again.
If the team could get her to talk to a designated crisis responder, they might be able to ITA her.
ITA stands for Involuntary Treatment Act. That state law says if someone meets a high threshold of danger to themselves or others, or presents a grave disability, their civil liberties can be taken away and they can be forced into treatment.
The thing is, there’s a lot of time between being ITA’d and being put in a secured facility—because there are almost no secure beds in Eastern Washington.
Eastern State Hospital is the only psychiatric hospital on this side of the state that can take ITAs, and after recent policy changes, it doesn’t take very many.
So even if the team could get this woman into a local hospital, and a designated crisis responder ITA’s her, the woman can decide she doesn’t want to go to Eastern, walk out of the local hospital that can’t legally detain her, and go back home.
Such are many days in the life of the Behavioral Health Unit.
Or, she could decide that she wants to get back on her treatment regime and go through a voluntary treatment program, like the one run by Pioneer at the county’s crisis and stabilization center.
Rayanne Paget is a Program Administrator at Frontier Behavioral Health. She says the road to recovery is long.
RAYANNE PAGET: “I think working in the crisis field, success can be varied depending on the day. And so a lot of it is whether or not it was a good contact and we planted a seed in that individual's brain to call sooner or to call 988 to get support, reach out for help.”
EB: Mental health issues and drug use are almost always intertwined, the experts tell me. Fentanyl use is decreasing in Spokane, but meth is back on the rise, officers say—and with it, the chicken-and-the-egg question of whether schizophrenia or meth comes first.
In lieu of enough involuntary treatment beds, some people start thinking of jail as the only alternative secure detox facility.
Officer Casey Jones has worked the downtown Spokane precinct for over a decade. On a different Thursday morning, Jones is driving his typical route along the outskirts of downtown.
When he cruises by the 7/11 gas station on Second and Division, he recognizes someone. Well, Jones recognizes most of the people he passes. But he recognizes this guy because Jones is pretty sure he has a few warrants out.
He checks his records. He’s right—the most recent one is for harassment at the library. By now, the guy has seen Jones and takes off on his bike. Jones swings around to cut the biker off as he crosses the street.
There’s no struggle. The guy is mainly disappointed that he’s gonna lose all his stuff.
As Jones searches, he finds an eyeglass case with two glass pipes and two meth crystals in it. Each rock is about the size of an acorn.
Illegal possession—that’s a new charge, Jones says.
Jones drives over to the jail, which already has a handful of cars in the booking line. As he waits, Jones talks to the man he just arrested.
CASEY JONES: “Do you want to get clean off of meth?...So this is the thing that I see. People try to keep their feet in both worlds. I understand you want housing, but you don't think your meth addiction has any influence on your being on the streets. And it does.”
EB: Their conversation about addiction lasts nearly the hour it takes to get the man booked.
CJ: “You're going to jail today, you have to take care of your warrants. This is a can you keep kicking down the road. You gotta take care of this first. Jeremy, Jeremy. This is not a hindrance to you getting clean. In fact, this is probably the best way to do it. Listen, over there, you could walk right out the door. In fact, that’s why I quit taking people there in lieu of jail. ‘Diverting’ people. Because I would get a call five minutes later, ‘Yeah, he just ran out the door.’”
EB: All the officers I talked to agreed that adding entry points to services and warm handoffs between resources is a good idea. But they often feel like a lot of people just don’t want help.
CJ: “I want you to start seeing value in you getting clean. I wish I could make people want it. But I can't.”
EB: Officers feel like they’re a small part of a huge system that isn’t delivering.
CJ: “You know, I see the ins and outs, how the system is broken. But I have no control over that. What I do have control over is that I do my best. I kinda joke with the jailers sometimes, cuz they—I go in there so often, I bring so many people in there, that it makes them work, and they kinda razz me. But I let them know, taxpayers deserve my best. So I just do my best in this big machine. If Jeremy has a change of heart eventually, it’s worth it.”
EB: I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Sarah Mizes-Tan, Doug Nadvornick, James Dawson, Eliza Billingham and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in your feeds on Monday.
It’s SPR.
