Last year, Senator Harriette Chandler stepped bravely forward to help the Massachusetts Senate through troubled times. Now, at a different but equally critical moment, she has graciously agreed to make way for Karen Spilka, who has rounded up the necessary votes to win the president’s job.

Chandler was the woman of the moment in December, when then-president Stan Rosenberg temporarily surrendered the gavel amid the turmoil created by allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of his husband, Bryon Hefner. At the time, with Rosenberg’s future uncertain, the Senate needed a well-liked caretaker who could preside over the body while the Senate Ethics Committee conducted an investigation, but who had no long-term designs on the presidency.

Chandler fit that bill. She is well-respected in the Senate, where she has served since 2001, but at 80, wasn’t seen as a threat by any of the senators eyeing the presidency. Thus she was elected acting president. Then, in February, the Globe reported that Hefner had involved himself in the workings of Rosenberg’s office and had tried to meddle in Senate affairs. And further, that Rosenberg had instructed his staff to give his husband access to his Senate e-mail account. Those developments made it highly unlikely that Rosenberg would ever return to the presidency. With no consensus successor, the Senate faced the prospect of a protracted campaign for the top job. And so senators elevated Chandler from acting president to full president, with the understanding she would wield the gavel until January of 2019, whereupon a new president would be elected.

Since then, however, Spilka, the Ways and Means chairwoman, secured the votes to win the presidency and hoped to assume the job as soon as possible. Chandler, however, seemed to enjoy the job and wanted to remain as long as she could.

That created some awkward moments. Spilka obviously didn’twant to appear to be pushing Chandler, 15 years her senior, from the post. She tried to work out an amicable handoff sometime in early summer, but that effort hit a temporary impasse.

Fortunately, that came to an amicable end Thursday afternoon with a reasonable compromise: A joint statement announced that Spilka will take over as Senate president at the end of July. The statement hit the right notes, with mention of mutual respect, orderly transitions, and institutional stability.

Spilka needs to grab hold of the office in order to start to establish parity with Governor Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, both of whom have been at their jobs for some time.

Holding the presidency will also let Spilka find her footing, staff her new office, and start to put her leadership team in place, if she chooses. Certainly it would make sense for her to name a new chairman of Ways and Means, the position she herself will be vacating to take the presidency. That would give the Senate’s new chief budgeteer a chance to get accustomed to that pivotal post.

Chandler surely understood all those considerations. And though she obviously wanted to extend her own time in the president’s chair, she should be commended for recognizing that once Spilka had lined up the votes, she deserved the chance to take office and advance her vision.

Ultimately, Chandler did the Senate a service by taking the gavel in troubled times, and shows leadership now by working with Spilka on an orderly transition of power.