THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603080618
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
``Two a.m. on Sunday,'' predicted budget negotiator-and-senator Charles J. Colgan of Manassas, as he exited a closed-door huddle on Virginia's $35 billion spending plan.
``I'd say 7:30 p.m. Saturday night,'' predicted Sen. Virgil H. Goode Jr. of Franklin, who's in his first year as one of eight budget negotiators.
``No idea,'' concluded Sen. Joseph V. Gartlan of Alexandria, who's also sitting in on the sessions.
In the roving lottery on when the 1996 General Assembly will ``sine die'' (Latin for go home), it was anyone's guess Thursday.
After a weeklong procedural delay, House and Senate budget negotiators were just beginning to wade through disagreements on the size of bond packages, teachers salaries, and dozens of other issues.
During a 5 p.m. break in the action, Colgan, a Democrat, who sits on the budget panel, said the conferees had achieved at least one minor breakthrough. They'd tentatively decided to drop a House plan forcing Gov. George F. Allen to accept federal Goals 2000 money if he wants a pet project: expanded testing of Virginia schoolchildren.
But others said there are still numerous disagreements to be resolved. ``We're still dancing around on some basic issues,'' said Gartlan.
Hanging over the discussions is the fact that it will take about 18-36 hours after the negotiators finish to get the revised budget document on the desks of the members.
Even if the conference committee should complete its work in the wee hours of the morning - far from a certainty - it would still be Saturday before members would have the revised document.
``I don't see us getting it in time to read it,'' said Del. Jay W. DeBoer, D-Petersburg.
No one was watching the deliberations with a keener eye than Doug Mitchell, publications director for the legislature.
Since Wednesday morning, Mitchell has had a change of clothes and a sleeping back stashed in his office in the basement of the General Assembly, waiting to start printing out the anticipated 400-or-so pages of budget amendments.
It will take him and a co-worker about 3 1/2 minutes to run off each copy of a document that size, Mitchell said. That means he can make about 20 copies an hour. Even if he brings in an outside printing firm to help, he expects that it will take him about six hours just to produce enough copies for the members.
And his work can't begin, Mitchell added, until Senate and House staffs have gone over the work of the budget conferees line by line. That process, he said, can easily take a day.
``We're just kind of on hold,'' he said.
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY by CNB