The regular session of the legislature came to a close on Sunday, with no agreement on an operating budget for 2013-15. Gov. Inslee has called for a special session to begin May 13, but he did not limit its focus to the budget. In his press conference, he listed the following as priorities for the special session:

1. Operating budget
2. Transportation budget (specifically including funding for SR 167/509, I-405 widening, Columbia River Crossing, North-South corridor in Spokane, and transit)
3. Education policy measures
4. Drunk driving legislation
5. Gun control
6. Reproductive Parity Act
7. DREAM Act

The Seattle Times editorializes,

Gov. Jay Inslee insisted Wednesday that the Legislature pass bills on gun control, drunken driving, abortion insurance and undocumented students. With the 105-day session ending Sunday, the time has come and gone for these bills. All these are issues this editorial page has strongly supported and will again — next year.

Any special session needs to focus on the budget, which will take some work. On the crucial issue of revenue, the two chambers are $900 million apart.

Indeed, as Gov. Inslee said at the press conference, “The parties are not miles apart at the moment, they are light years apart at the moment.” The AP notes that Sen. Andy Hill, the ways and means committee chair, “told TVW Sunday that the current situation is one where ‘the budgets are very far apart’ and that the votes do not exist in the Senate to raise taxes.”

Additionally (from the same AP report), House majority leader Pat Sullivan said “Our focus has to be on the budget. If there are other issues that come up and we’re able to get settled, that’s great. But the focus has to really be on the budget.”

State lawmakers are bound for overtime, again, after whiffing on nearly every significant issue hurled at them in the regular session ending today.

For most, the list of chores they need-to-do and those they still want-to-do is almost as long now as when they started 105 days ago.

Members of the Democrat-run House and Republican-controlled Senate seem farther apart on budget and policy matters compared to many previous years they’ve run into extra sessions.

They say a divided Legislature, rookie governor, court order to boost school funding and slow economic recovery combined to create a perfect storm of political inaction.

Washington State Wire has some history on special sessions (which are seeming pretty run of the mill these days):

The modern era of legislative-session management might be said to have begun with a 1979 constitutional amendment that established the current 105-day schedule in odd-numbered budget-writing years. Lawmakers have gone into special session 22 times since 1980, and when a break has been allowed between regular and special sessions budget negotiators rarely have reached agreement before lawmakers report back for work. In one year, 1991, with a budget situation much like today’s and a political makeup of House and Senate that mirrors the current one, Gov. Booth Gardner called a five-week time out and a special session began June 10. Not a bit of work was accomplished during the recess and the dickering continued right up until the very last possible moment on June 30. For a time it appeared state government might have to shut down for lack of a budget.