In the end, 30 lawmakers in the divided Washington state Senate agreed on a budget Friday night that sent many messages and served one purpose above all others.

It got the Senate out of possible gridlock – even while some Republicans had qualms about the state’s growing reliance on federal health-care money to serve the poor and most Democrats voting in favor had criticisms about cutting aid to the poor, too.

“This is the new way of doing things,’’ Sen. Andy Hill, the Redmond Republican and leading budget author whose floor speech touched on the two-party effort to write the …

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A Republican-dominated coalition in the Senate approved the Legislature’s first substantial bills of the year Monday, sending three measures to the House that would once again change the system that protects injured workers. A near-party line vote approved two measures, but a third bill drew five members of the minority Democratic Caucus to its side.

Labor groups are keenly opposed to all three bills –Senate Bill 5128, which opens cash settlements of disability claims for workers of any age; 5127, which expands structured settlements of claims to workers as young as 40, down from …

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