Rendell takes budget talks private

HARRISBURG - Gov. Rendell and top legislative leaders met privately yesterday to try to revive state budget negotiations, which have been on life support for the last few weeks.

Rendell met with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) as well as top Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), at the governor's mansion for about 90 minutes.

The legislators said the two sides had made progress, but declined to give specifics other than to confirm that another private session with Rendell had been scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans said they think they will reach an agreement soon.

"I do not in any way want to try to overexaggerate how much work and effort it's going to take to make this happen," Evans said yesterday after the private gathering. "This is a very challenging process."

The state is a month into a new fiscal year without a budget, and has a diminished capacity to spend money.

Rendell has said he will sign a temporary budget by early next week to allow state workers to be paid, but will withold billions in spending for schools, universities, hospitals, and social-service organizations.

The budget the governor intends to sign is a version of the $27.1 billion proposal crafted by Senate Republicans and known as Senate Bill 850. Rendell has opposed that plan because he believes it contains unacceptable spending cuts, but he will use it as a vehicle to get paychecks to state employees and keep core services intact.

S.B. 850 is now before the House. House Democratic leaders said yesterday that they intended to call a final vote on it Tuesday, and then send it to Rendell.