Budget, other issues await

ANNAPOLIS — An array of potentially contentious issues faces lawmakers on the final day of the General Assembly session today, but legislative leaders say they are confident the session will end by the midnight adjournment deadline.

The biggest issue hanging was the $23.6 billion state budget, the one bill that lawmakers have a constitutional duty to pass before they adjourn.

A team of House and Senate negotiators signed off on a budget proposal Saturday night, and it was expected to win easy approval in both houses today. Negotiators also approved a second bill during talks that extended almost until midnight that included some minor tax and fee increases to balance the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The agenda for the final day included several of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s major initiatives, including his plan to impose a $2.50-a-month fee on sewer bills to upgrade sewage treatment plants and reduce pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.

There was even a chance for some last-minute maneuvering over a slot machine bill that key leaders said has no chance of passing this year.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch, Anne Arundel Democrat, promised that there would be a vote on slot machine gambling in the Ways and Means Committee, which has been sitting on Mr. Ehrlich’s slots bill since it was passed by the Senate in February.

One prospect was a last-minute effort to revive slot machine legislation by bringing out a bill to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November and let voters decide whether they want to legalize slot machines.

Mr. Busch, a slots opponent, would not say Saturday whether such a bill would be voted out of the committee. But asked about prospects for a bill passing, he replied: “Is there anything deader than extremely dead?” That was a reference to the comment by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Prince George’s Democrat, that slot machine legislation was “extremely dead.”

Despite the consensus that it was too late to pass a slots bill, some lawmakers were worried that a slots debate would endanger other legislation.

“I just can’t believe it’s going to go out with a whimper,” said House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve, Montgomery County Democrat.

James “Chip” DiPaula, the governor’s budget secretary, said the budget compromise to which a conference committee of House and Senate negotiators agreed maintained the governor’s spending priorities. Mr. Ehrlich also was pleased that the committee scrapped a $670 million tax package that the House had passed along with a Senate proposal to raise about $16 million a year by imposing a 5 percent sales tax on salty snack foods such as chips and pretzels.

Several of the governor’s bills were close to final approval, but passage was not assured because of the heavy workload facing lawmakers in the final 14 hours of the session.

House and Senate committees reached agreement Saturday on the governor’s “flush tax” bill, which he said was “clearly the most important environmental bill of the last decade or two.” The bill, which still needed final votes in both houses, included Mr. Ehrlich’s proposal to add a $2.50 surcharge on sewer bills. But it also would charge the same fee to people with septic tanks, a provision the governor had fought to keep out of the bill.

Other issues on the agenda for the final day would:

• Put a 2 percent tax on health maintenance organization premiums to finance a plan that would provide health care for some of the estimated 700,000 Marylanders who do not have health insurance.

• Require companies that get state contracts to pay a “living wage” of at least $10.50 an hour.

• Extend a costly state program that provides tax credits as an incentive for builders to preserve historic buildings.

• Impose a temporary 10 percent surcharge on the corporate income tax to provide money for higher education and to limit tuition increases to 5 percent a year.

Although lawmakers will leave town with a balanced budget for fiscal 2005, which begins July 1, failure to pass a slot machine bill or increase taxes will leave the state facing a deficit of $800 million or more in 2006, with bigger deficits looming down the road.

“The big piece is the … deficit. We still haven’t done anything to address that,” said Senate Majority Leader Nathaniel J. McFadden, Baltimore Democrat. “It’s going to require us over the interim to come up with some ideas, a consensus, as to how to address it.”

• Associated Press writer Gretchen Parker contributed to this report.