Today's headlines:
- Spokane explores spinning off its fire department into a separate fire district to save money.
- Spokane County is bringing in more sales tax revenue than expected—with no small thanks to alcohol sales. But it won't be enough to stave off budget cuts.
- Idaho has one of the highest rates of uninsured young kids in the U.S., according to the latest numbers.
- Working women in Washington could get more support through menopause and perimenopause changes.
Plus, Erin Sellers with Range Media was in the courtroom during the two-week trial for three Spokane protesters charged with federal conspiracy. Sellers talks about the experience and the verdict with SPR's Owen Henderson.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Owen Henderson, Sarah Mizes-Tan and Erin Sellers.
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 Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
On today’s show, Spokane city and county are both facing budget difficulties.
The city is exploring the idea of spinning off its fire department into a fire district to save money, while the county asks agencies to cut back spending.
Plus, a new report shows Idaho near the top of the list of states for uninsured young children.
And after last week’s guilty verdicts in the federal conspiracy trial of three Spokane protestors, we talk through what’s coming next as the legal battle continues.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
Spokane is looking deeper into spinning off the city fire department into a stand-alone fire district. SPR’s Eliza Billingham has more.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Right now, the fire department competes directly with police, libraries, and other services for city funding.
A fire district would be able to levy the public directly for increases to its budget.
New state legislation limits certain fire district levies to a dollar fifty per one thousand dollars of assessed property value.
A fire district also opens up the possibility of fire benefit charges. That’s when larger structures that would take more resources to protect pay a larger amount than a small structure with the same assessed value.
As president of the firefighters’ union, Mike Walker said this has been the Local 29’s goal for years.
MIKE WALKER: Fire engines are double the price that they used to be. The ladder trucks are three times the price they used to be… All the money gets put into an account and we try to save for that and prepare for that and then it gets taken… Having an autonomy for the department to be able to give will give the citizens of Spokane a much better service and it'll allow us to plan for the future.”
EB: The public would need to vote on whether to create a fire district.
The City is pursuing a resolution to go before voters this fall.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: Spokane County will need to cut back spending again this budget season thanks to rapidly growing costs.
Expenditure growth is outpacing total revenue seven to one.
But there’s a bright spot—the county is bringing in millions more dollars in sales tax revenue than expected.
So far this year, sales tax brought the county almost 3 million dollars more than this time last year.
Food services, retail and construction are all doing better than expected.
Budget analyst Jason Metcalf told County Commissioners yesterday alcohol sales are growing especially fast—which brought good cheer to Commissioner Al French.
JASON METCALF: “Drinking places so far is up 8.6%.”
AL FRENCH: “Well, that explains it—people are drinking a lot more.”
OH: That’s just from places like bars. Alcohol retail sales from liquor stores are up more than 18% from last year.
Still, commissioners will ask county departments to cut back spending as they bring forward budget proposals.
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Idaho has the fifth-highest rate of uninsured young children in the country, according to a new report.
The numbers, out yesterday from Georgetown University, found nearly eight percent of kids under 6 were uninsured in the Gem State in 2024—the most recent data available.
The national average for the same year is just over 5%, while Washington and Oregon both saw rates of about 2.5%.
With an almost 11% rate, Texas sits at the top of the list.
The report covers the years after pandemic-era restrictions that barred states from removing people from Medicaid had ended.
Medicaid covers more than a third of kids in rural Idaho.
Health policy advocates say access to health care will likely get harder for kids as Idaho Medicaid prepares for big changes—including doctor and disability care provider pay cuts.
— — —
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson plans to create more protections for women experiencing menopause symptoms in the workplace.
State Government Reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan has more on yesterday’s announcement.
SARAH MIZES-TAN: The governor signed an executive order to carve out accommodations for women in menopause.
That’s the period in life when a woman’s fertility ends, causing symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings and insomnia. Governor Ferguson:
BOB FERGUSON: “We are losing people in the workforce with tremendous knowledge, tremendous experience, we are losing their voices in leadership because we are not doing enough to prepare for a natural stage of life that impacts half our population.”
SMT: Research shows that two in five women considered quitting or did quit their job due to menopause symptoms.
Advocates say flexibility around working from home or breathable work uniforms for hot flashes are ways workplaces can be more menopause friendly.
A work group will look into these and other ideas and will present them to the governor next year.
In Olympia, I’m Sarah Mizes-Tan.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: Late last week, a jury delivered guilty verdicts for the Spokane Three: three Spokanites charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer for their actions during an anti-immigration enforcement protest last year.
Justice Forral, Bajan Mavalwalla II, and Jac Archer each now face up to six years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. Their attorneys say they'll likely appeal the verdict.
Reactions continue to come in with some calling the charges an attack on the First Amendment while others say disagreement with a jury's verdict doesn't make the verdict invalid.
Erin Sellers with Range Media was in the courtroom during that two-week trial and they join us now to talk about the verdict and where things go from here. Erin, glad to have you back.
ERIN SELLERS: Glad to be here, Owen.
OH: So first, just give us a sense of what it was like in the courtroom when the verdict was announced.
ES: Yeah, Judge Rebecca Pennell told everybody, you know, I haven't read this verdict yet, but when it's read, no outbursts. Like, you will be escorted out. They hand her a packet of papers. She flips through it. She reads it, keeps her face super impassive, hands it to the clerk who starts reading it out loud.
The courtroom was full. It was so full that they had to send people to the overflow room and everybody in there, it seems to me, was there for a specific verdict. So as soon as Justice’s was read, you could hear it was sort of like this building cacophony of people trying to weep quietly.
First, it's Justice’s section of the room. And then as we get to Bajan Mavalwalla’s verdict and then finally Jac Archer’s, there's this heavy silence over the room. But you look around and everybody's crying.
And then as soon as the courts adjourned, just like sobbing. The federal prosecutors left super quickly. But the defense teams took a lot longer to pack up their stuff, roll out. And even some of the attorneys were crying as they left the room.
So it was just a lot of, like, just quiet devastation as people tried to respect the rules of the court while also kind of mourning for their friends and community members.
OH: So it sounds like people, including the defense attorneys, were pretty surprised.
ES: Yeah, there was a sense of shock. I talked to attorneys for all three of the defendants and ‘shocked,’ ‘floored,’ those were the kinds of words they were using. I talked to a couple of lawyers who weren't working on this case. They felt like it would be pretty hard to get a conspiracy conviction. So I think there was just this true sense of shock. Nobody expected that.
Like to put it in context, there have been people in other states charged with conspiracy. Think the Bundy folks that took over the Oregon Wildlife Refuge. And even in those cases, they weren't actually able to secure conspiracy convictions against all of the people who took over a wildlife reserve. Think occupying a wildlife reserve; armed men with guns.
This was a nine hour protest. No hospitalizations, no weapons. People said they wanted to sit in front of a bus. That seems pretty different than people taking over a wildlife preserve. So I think there was a lot of like, ‘Oh, there's no way we can get a conspiracy charge convicted here.’ But it got across the finish line.
OH: What are some of the reactions that stuck with you?
ES: Justice Forral’s reaction was the one that I've been thinking about the most.
Right after the verdict, whether it was innocent or guilty, there was a press conference planned. None of the defendants chose to speak at this, although a couple of them chose somebody to speak on their behalf.
Over the course of the trial, Justice, they'd been reading a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. And as they come out of the courtroom, they grab one of their friends and they point out a section in the book that they'd marked, just a short little paragraph. And they asked their friends to read that.
And it read, “I wanted you to see what real courage is instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
So that was the reaction that stuck with me the most. Of course, there's tons of public official statements, mostly in favor of the protesters in support of them.
Although I think a candidate for the sixth legislative district of Washington's House of Representatives, Jonathan Bingle, had a different take.
He said, “Just because you don't like the outcome doesn't mean it's fascism. Peacefully protesting is a right recognized by the Constitution and should be protected. But impeding law enforcement from fulfilling their lawful duty is not protected protest, it’s criminality,” was Bingle’s response.
OH: As you mentioned, many reactions were in support of the protesters. But what about the Department of Justice? What were the reactions from the U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington's office?
ES: Yes. So the day after the conviction, Pete Serrano sent out a press release that said that “Our office's sole motivation for the charging and prosecution of these individuals was to hold them accountable to the law.”
He also said in that press release that just because the jury did not find in a way that some people wanted does not negate the fact that a crime occurred. It was a very long press release. So those are a couple of key chunks from it.
OH: If the attorneys say that they're preparing an appeal, what does that path look like in federal court? Where do things go next?
ES: So first up is what's called a Rule 29. And this is a weird quirk of federal court where a judge can acquit if they feel that a lack of evidence for the charge has been presented regardless of what the jury decided. It's a weirdly drawn out process where the defense will have two weeks to submit their motions or their full case brace of, like, ‘Here's why you should acquit.’
Then the federal government will have two weeks to respond to that. And then the defense will have one week to respond to the response. And then all of that paperwork will go to the judge who will look it over, set a hearing date. And on that hearing date, she will decide if she wants to acquit the defendant's one defendant, two defendants, all three of them.
Archer's attorney filed a preliminary motion. And the argument that Archer's attorney plans to make is that while the jury couldn't rule on whether or not this was First Amendment protected speech because the First Amendment is the purview of the court, not the jury, the judge can.
And so Archer's attorney is saying all of the evidence that was presented against Archer is evidence that Archer was exercising their First Amendment right to speech or their right to freedom of association—none of that was really evidence for conspiracy. If the judge rules against them, then we go to an appeals process.
We've got a briefing schedule where everybody will submit their appeal. It'll go up to the Ninth Circuit. Are you going to a three judge panel or a nine judge panel? And so all of that is kind of up in the air and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.
OH: Yes, we will. And I'm sure we'll have you back to talk about it when we cross that bridge. Erin Sellers covers politics for Range Media. Thanks again for stopping by this morning.
ES: Thanks for having me, Owen.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Sarah Mizes-Tan, Erin Sellers and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
