“We can’t keep making offers if they’re not willing to make offers in the other direction,” Braun said. Two weeks into the special session, they weren’t actually negotiating, he explained; they were reviewing the two spending plans section by section to understand each other’s assumptions. That’s all they could do until House Democrats either passed the tax increases needed to make their budget balance, or cut that money out of their spending plan, he insisted.
Two days later, House Democrats flatly rejected a couple of Braun’s characterizations. Senate Republicans hadn’t made two offers, they made the same offer twice, House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan said. And the House counteroffer didn’t raise spending, it reduced it.
He declined to say which concessions they made, or by how much because “We’re not going to negotiate the budget in public.” But they were going to send over another offer later in the day.
Sullivan agreed they weren’t negotiating, even in private, just going through the budgets. He put the onus for that dilatory activity on Republicans, whom he accused of stalling until Monday, when state economists issued the next estimate of tax revenue for the coming years in hopes that it is up (it was).
Some sunshine would help
Although budgets are complicated, whether the Republicans made two different offers or just one, or the Democrats’ offer raised or lowered spending, wouldn’t take an accountant, just a perusal of paperwork. Senate Democratic Leader Sharon Nelson, who participated in the news conference, suggested the media ask the Republicans for their offers; the media suggested House Democrats release them, since they had them. No, said Sullivan, but if Republicans release offers they had made, Democrats would do likewise.
That provided a brief glimmer of hope for an otherwise hopeless task of giving the public a look at what is going on with the budget. Senate Republicans, after all, are big fans of opening up one of the driving factors of the budget — contract talks between state employees’ unions and the governor’s office. Perhaps they’d like to show how a little sunlight is a good thing for negotiations.
But Sullivan’s suggestion got no traction with Senate Majority Leader Mark Schoesler. The “we’ll show you ours if they show you theirs” proposal was no more sincere than passing a budget without passing the necessary taxes, he insisted.
Legislators will, instead, continue to grind their way through the process. At this rate, they’ll likely grind far into June, in a second special session.