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.
The House has offered to accept some fees, but not as much as the Senate would like; the Senate has offered a higher reserve fund than the original Senate budget, but not nearly as high as the House would like.
Whenever the negotiators agree on how much money they have to spend, they'll then have to turn to the business of spending it. The two sides have fairly big differences in how they make budget cuts to K-12 education and public health services, two of the biggest-ticket items in the budget.
Monday's talks had bogged down in rhetoric about education funding, as Sen.
"You've got all these factors hitting public schools at one time," Houck said, complaining that the House negotiators were trying to "steamroll" the Senate on education funding.
Cox, a teacher, replied that the House wants to mitigate cuts to K-12 education as much as possible.
"Why in the heck do I spend 27 years in the classroom if I want to cut K-12?" he asked.
Houck threatened that the Senate was prepared to stay until June if necessary, to which Del. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, said the House was, too.
Yesterday, Houck said it's still possible for negotiators to finish the budget by the scheduled adjournment on Saturday, but that the House will have to make concessions on education funding to do it.
"If they don't come off their public school cuts, we could be here much longer," Houck said. "We're not going to solve this economic crisis on the backs of our school-children."
Chelyen Davis: 540/368-5028
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com