House and Senate budget writers struggled to resolve differences over public school funding and new fees Friday with Gov. Bob McDonnell exhorting them to reach a deal a day before the General Assembly's scheduled adjournment.
The Republican governor met privately with the six House budget negotiators and their seven Senate counterparts early Friday morning, then met behind closed doors again with the House and Senate Democratic caucuses.
"I told them I look forward to seeing the budget tonight," McDonnell said after emerging from his closed meeting with the GOP-dominated House budget conference team. "They said we're working toward that. I told the Senate the same thing."
Without agreement at noon Friday, an on-time adjournment of the scheduled 60-day session appeared unlikely, forcing the General Assembly into overtime for the fifth time in 10 years.
Relations between the House panel and the Democratic-led Senate conferees remained cooperative if not cordial after a frosty start of the week -- disputes born of the House's distaste for high fees sought in the Senate budget and Senate disapproval of the House's deep cuts to kindergarten through high school.
But the load of line items to negotiate in a spare $70 billion two-year budget that returns state spending to its 2006 levels made the talks painstaking and slow, according to interviews with senators and delegates and their legislative staff advisers.
"We would hope that by the end of the evening, we could have an agreement in principle at least," said Robert Vaughn, director of the House Appropriations Committee staff.
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To restore some of the cash cut from state support to local school districts, the money would have to be diverted from other places in the budget, said Del. Lacey Putney, an independent from Bedford and the Appropriations Committee chairman.
"In order to get the K-12 package they would like, they can't preserve the same level of funding they have in their budget in other areas," he said.
