Budget deal still eluding Iowa lawmakers

DES MOINES - Closer, but still no budget deal.

That was the word Friday from leaders of the split-control Legislature working to hammer out a state budget deal that is holding up adjournment of their overtime 2015 session.

'We're trying to get everything up in front of us and working through it,” said House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha.

'I continue to be optimistic that people of good faith can find common ground,” the House leader added. 'I think it's completely realistic to think that we could be debating bills next week, and that's the end we're working towards.”

Leaders of the GOP-led Iowa House and the Iowa Senate's Democratic majority met privately Friday and expected to keep in touch by phone over the Memorial Day holiday as they plodded through negotiations aimed at setting an overall spending level for fiscal 2016 and allocating state aid increases to K-12 school for the next two fiscal years.

'There's no deal until there's a big deal,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, who declined to discuss specifics of the issues being addressed until the budget package is complete. 'We're hopeful we can get this done as quickly as we can.”

Gov. Terry Branstad said he's seen encouraging signs.

'My staff have been working closely with them and going over item by item the budget issues and sharing the concerns we have about different provisions,” Branstad told reporters Friday. 'I'm encouraged by the fact that both houses are now talking about providing funding for both years of the biennium in terms of supplemental state aid.”

However, the governor was less optimistic that the 2015 session will wrap up next week, saying he was hopeful final adjournment would come in the first week of June.

'I think we still have a long ways to go,” he said.

'We expect that the Legislature will complete its work before the end of the fiscal year,” Branstad added. 'We would have preferred to have them resolve this earlier.”

Branstad said he still held out hope the divided General Assembly would pass his priority measures to combat bullying in Iowa schools and expand broadband access to more Iowans, but legislative negotiators said their discussions are 98 percent budget” at this point for a session that started Jan. 12 and had run 135 days as of Friday - 25 days past when lawmakers' expense money ended.

When talks began in earnest this month, Democrats and Republicans were more than $100 million apart on spending for human services and Medicaid programs, while Branstad-led Republicans set a 1.25 percent state aid growth rate for K-12 schools in fiscal 2016 and a 2.45 percent boost to schools in fiscal 2017, but House Republicans recently scaled back their increase to 2 percent.

Democrats wanted 4 percent growth in state aid to K-12 school districts for both fiscal 2016 and 2017, but scaled back next year's request to 2.625 percent during negotiations and the two sides are considering a hybrid compromise for a 1.25 percent hike in base budgets and a one-time $55 million addition to resolve the fiscal 2016 impasse.

Negotiations still have not settled on an overall spending target for fiscal 2016. The two sides are working to bridge a gap that began at about $166 million but has been narrowed significantly. Initially, House Republicans capped fiscal 2016 state general fund spending at $7.176 billion, while Senate Democrats adopted Branstad's overall $7.341 billion spending plan but departed with him in a number of ways to get there.

Legislators plan to return to the Statehouse on Tuesday, but if there are any bills to debate, it likely will be Wednesday before either chamber would be in a position to take floor action, the leaders said.

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