Budget Still In Standoff Mode

The state budget for next year was left in limbo Tuesday when the Senate Finance Committee recessed without taking up the governor’s appropriation bill.

The committee was expected to start work on the governor’s proposed budget, but Republicans signaled they wouldn’t take up the issue until the governor’s final adjustments were dropped into the legislative mix. And those weren’t ready yet.

Republican leader Mark Norris says he’ll be having dinner with the governor and will ask for the budget to be fast-tracked to the legislature.

“We still await the final budget documents which the administration promised us on April sixteenth, and we’ve been waiting now, for … another..uh… well, it’s the twenty-seventh today, so do the math.”

The governor has outlined in broad terms an increased sales tax on items that cost more than thirty-two hundred dollars. But Republicans are slow-walking their response, waiting for the printed proposal before bringing forward their competing cuts.

Different Republicans have talked about cuts in several programs in order to avoid the sales tax increase sought by the governor. Their counter-proposal isn’t on paper yet, either.

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Meanwhile Senator Randy McNally, the Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, says the committee will reconvene to Wednesday (April 28) with the budget bills high on the agenda.

“I think there are members of the caucus that would like to see …all of the language of the tax measure, as well as the supplemental, the omnibus bill, those types of parts.”