JUNEAU -- For Alaska's budget stalemate to be resolved, Gov. Bill Walker is going to have to first act on the operating budget bill legislators have sent him, said Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage.
Only then can lawmakers begin work on a budget, he said. Meyer made his comments to reporters after a minutes-long "technical" session of the Senate on Friday in which the few senators present ran through an agenda with nothing on it and then adjourned.
That left the Senate in technical compliance with the constitutional requirement that it meet every three days to stay in the special session Walker called to address the state budget and other issues.
"I know people think we're not working hard enough, but the reality is we can't do much more on the budget until we know what the governor does," Meyer told reporters.
Walker has until Tuesday to sign or veto the budget bill that legislators passed, but which Walker said was "unacceptable" because it wasn't fully funded. It called for spending more than $5 billion in state general funds with revenues of just over $2 billion, leaving a $3 billion gap.
Meyer said the Senate's next session will be Tuesday and will also be a technical session with only a few members present and no work expected to be done.
Meyer said if Walker acted on the budget bill, the Senate Finance Committee could resume work as soon as Wednesday. Both the budget bill and a bill to expand Medicaid, another of the items on Walker's special session call, are in the Finance Committee, which only met twice during the special session, most recently a couple of weeks ago.
But before anything can happen, legislators need to know what Walker is going to do by Tuesday's budget signing deadline, Meyer said.
"We can't pass another budget knowing this budget is still alive," he said.
Following the House of Representatives' last session, on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, said they, too, were waiting to see what the governor did with the budget he's been sent.
"I'm suspecting he'll sign," Chenault said, but may use his line-item veto on some items.
But that won't be the final budget action, because a decision will still need to be made on withdrawing money from the Constitutional Budget Reserve to fund the budget, and that could have other additions or deletions.
Meyer said the important budget discussions need to happen in the House, because the Senate passed a budget with the 15 votes out of 20 senators needed to meet the three-quarters requirement to withdraw money from the CBR.
"The way we look at it, we passed a fully funded budget," he said.
It's now up to Chenault and Rep. Chris Tuck, D-Anchorage, the House minority leader, to come to an agreement that fully funds their budget, he said.
"Mike, you and Chris have to work this out," Meyer said.
Meyer said if Walker would pressure House Democrats to accept Chenault's "reasonable" budget demands, an agreement could be reached quickly.
Legislators are also debating where they want to meet, with leadership of the majority caucuses in both the House and Senate expressing a decided preference for Anchorage.
On Friday in Juneau, Meyer and Senate Majority Leader John Coghill, R-North Pole, took a tour of the Capitol renovations that they say makes Juneau a bad option this year.
"My preference would be to come back here to Juneau, but on the other hand if it's so loud people can't have conversations and think, and we're dodging construction guys trying to get to our offices, it's probably not the best venue to conclude our session," he said.
Members of the Juneau delegation said there are other meeting spaces available in Juneau that can host the special session, and that some staff continued to work in the Capitol last year during construction.
At a public event in Juneau Friday, Walker looked over at a couple of legislators present and said he wished there were many more there. And he suggested that there may well be soon.
"We'll look at ways of getting them back" to Juneau, he said.