RICHMOND
--Lawmakers trying to hammer out a deal on the state budget say they can still get it done in time to adjourn on schedule Saturday.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.
A big topic of contention seems to be the proposed cap on school support staff. Gov. Tim Kaine put the cap in his original budget, and the House has agreed to it. But the Senate strongly dislikes it. Houck, a former educator, thinks it's bad policy.
"The support positions in Virginia are very much in jeopardy because of this cap," Houck said, calling it a "big difference, major difference" between the two negotiating teams.
Hamilton said the delegates were surprised by the "vehemence" with which the Senate negotiators broke with the governor on the staffing cap.
Kaine says he's open to other alternatives to save K-12 money, but that he put in the support staff cap because there's already a similar cap on teaching staff.
Another area of potential conflict--the House's push to force Virginia's large public universities, like the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary, to have a certain percentage of their student bodies be in-state students.
The issue comes from the frustrations of some parents that their straight-A, well-rounded children couldn't get into UVa. or similar schools. Several bills were introduced to make those schools save more slots for in-state students, rather than out-of-state students. The bills died, but they were incorporated into the House budget.
The Senate negotiators don't favor such a policy.
"We tend to trust the boards of visitors and the colleges and universities to operate themselves," Houck said. "We don't take the point that we need to micromanage colleges and universities."
Kaine, too, dislikes that provision in the House budget, pointing out that the higher tuition paid by out-of-state students helps subsidize lower costs for in-state students.
He said it's a valid discussion to have, but that such a restriction on colleges would need to come with additional state money.
"I don't think it's the right way to solve the frustration," Kaine said yesterday. "It's not the number of out-of-state students that's the problem."
Kaine has been getting daily updates from budget negotiators and says he's optimistic they can finish their work on time.
"There are a couple of stumbling blocks on issues," he said. "[But] the differences this year are much less than in past years, and we ought to be able to get there."
Hamilton and Houck also said they're still hopeful for an on-time budget and adjournment. Typically the budget must be done by Friday in order to get it printed in time for the full House and Senate to vote on it Saturday, the day of adjournment.
The negotiators have a lot of work to do before then, Houck cautioned.
"We're not out of the woods yet. We've got a long way to go in a short period of time," he said. "We're going to have to burn some midnight oil."
Chelyen Davis: 804/782-9362
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com