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RICHMOND

But it may not be much earlier than that.

Negotiations between a dozen budget conferees--six from the House, six from the Senate--have been moving forward steadily but slowly as they try to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the two-year budget.

Unlike most of the past nine years, this year's negotiation process isn't fraught with huge differences in tax philosophy--differences that have pushed budget talks into long impasses several times in past years.

Instead, the major difficulty this time is finding agreement on how to distribute more than a billion dollars in federal stimulus money, while still making cuts to state spending to reflect the fact that without that federal money, the state budget would be $3.7 billion in the hole.

Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, a member of the Senate budget team, said negotiations are going slowly and that lawmakers are just getting into the nuts and bolts, sitting down in twos and threes to go over specific areas of the budget.

They're looking at spreadsheets, prepared by staff, that compare the two houses' budgets line by line.

"The discussions have been civil," Houck said. "There's been more agreement than disagreement."

But where there are policy differences, he said, they are "very sharp, very clear cut."

On the House side, Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, said talks are "making progress."

The House and Senate negotiators have agreed, at least in principle, on trying to save back about $150 million in a reserve fund, in the expectation that the recession isn't going to go away any time soon.

They're trying to figure out how to spend--or save--about $218 million in flexible funding from the federal government.

And they're also debating how to use the approximately $800 million in education funding from the federal stimulus package. That money--which can be used for public schools and higher education--can be used only for things that have been cut, Houck said, and K-12 education hasn't suffered cuts until this year.