The state Senate’s budget-writing panel has OK’d an $18.6 billion spending plan that funnels more state dollars to Medicaid. State workers, including some who already have been forced to take furlough days off without pay, will pay more for their health insurance, under the proposal.

Charleston City Council has approved Mayor Joe Riley’s choice to head the city’s fire department, as it continues to recover from a blaze last year that killed nine firefighters. Fifty-four-year-old Thomas Carr is chief of the Montgomery County, Md., Fire and Rescue Service. He plans to retire from that department after a 30-year career and start in Charleston next month.

The Senate has passed a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry aimed at preventing the economy from plunging into a recession.