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State budget negotiators still apart on details Date published: 3/10/2010
BY CHELYEN DAVIS
RICHMOND --Budget negotiators worked to reach a compromise on revenue as they failed to meet a self-imposed deadline last night for an initial report.Negotiators regularly miss that deadline, although this year the House side had talked about trying to meet it. That didn't happen; talks have been going slowly. The two sides spent last evening trading offers on fees, compensation and other issues, but negotiations stalled just before 8 p.m. when the House took a Senate offer, dropped it back on senators' coffee table, and declared it "not a serious proposal." "You give someone a proposal like that, you want to go overtime," said Del. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights. The two sides are still mired in revenue issues, such as how much the House will accept of the fees contained in the Senate budget--fees that Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, called "phantom fees" because they haven't all passed as separate bills. Between fees and other things, the Senate budget assumes about $600 million more than the House budget. Gov. Bob McDonnell said he was disappointed in the failure to meet that first deadline. "No," he said when asked if he was satisfied with where negotiations were last eve-ning. "They're supposed to be done in six hours, and it's not done." McDonnell said he had made having a budget done on time--that is, this Saturday--a priority since he took office in January. To that end, he has met several times with the budget conferees and offered help if they need it. He said he understands how challenging this budget is--negotiators are cutting an additional $2.3 billion from the budget, on top of $2 billion in cuts proposed by former Gov. Tim Kaine. "I would have just liked to see them meeting earlier," McDonnell said. "I don't think there's enough prog-ress being made." He added that he met yesterday with some budget negotiators individually and believes those were productive discussions. "I think they understand if they finish by Thursday, they can still make a Saturday adjournment and that satisfies all our goals," McDonnell said. The negotiators have said they have to settle revenue issues first, before they can talk about spending issues, since it's important to first agree on how much money they have to spend. As of yesterday, the two sides were going back and forth with offers on fees, compensation and reserve funds.
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