JUNEAU -- Two Capitol meetings, one that happened and one that didn't, suggest a budget deal may be hard to come by for Alaska leaders.
But Gov. Bill Walker said Monday evening he remains optimistic that a deal can happen, even if it won't be as soon as he'd have liked.
"I had suggested over the weekend that we push for a deal, to be completed by tonight was my goal, but that didn't seem to fit with others' intentions," he said.
Walker canceled weekend speaking engagements to be available for the negotiations.
At Walker's suggestion, Rep. Chris Tuck, D-Anchorage, leader of the House's minority Independent Democratic Caucus, also stayed in Juneau over the weekend waiting for negotiations that never happened.
"I'm pretty angry," said Tuck in an opinion piece submitted to Alaska Dispatch News. He said his House counterpart, Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, who leads the majority, was a "no show" to the negotiations and went on vacation instead of dealing with the public's business.
Chenault's Juneau office was closed and dark Monday, and messages left with it and his Kenai district offices were not returned.
Walker called the Legislature into special session last week to deal with budget and other issues, but just a few days into the 30-day session the Republican-led majorities in each House voted to go on "recess" for 12 days, with some but not all meetings canceled.
In a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee on Monday, committee members grilled Pat Pitney, Walker's budget director, on the new "Take 2" budget that the governor submitted when the Legislature failed to pass a budget that included the money to pay for it.
Pitney calls that a "fully funded" budget and said she hoped the Take 2 budget would lead to a compromise budget that would pass the Legislature. That would have to include reaching the key hurdle of a three-quarters vote of each house to access the $10 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve for the $3 billion needed to balance the budget next year.
But Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, was skeptical, saying the changes Walker was proposing to the budget were just things that he'd always wanted. But what's holding up negotiations is House Democrats trying to add more money to the budget.
"This doesn't get us any closer to a three-quarter vote," Micciche said. "These are not the things that the minority has asked for," he said.
Among the changes Pitney detailed in the Take 2 budget were more money for schools, ferries, higher education and union contracts.
Micciche said that tough cuts had already been made by the Legislature, and suggested that the Walker administration proposing an addition to the budget shows it is not serious enough about the budget.
"We are working on the survivability of our state in a very difficult fiscal situation," he said.
Pitney assured him that they knew that.
"The administration and the governor are well aware of the fiscal situation," Pitney said, and the Take 2 budget adds 1.4 percent to the budget in hopes of reaching a compromise that would allow the budget to be fully funded.
Tuck says his caucus position asks for no net increase but Republican negotiators have rejected cuts in such areas as oil tax credits that would balance spending increases.
Walker said his proposed Take 2 budget included more than the Republican-led Senate had wanted to spend but less than the House Democrats sought and negotiations this week might bring the two sides together.
"Our numbers are probably closer to the Senate majority," he said. "They're kind of in between, which is kind of a good place to be."
Also complicating negotiations are Tuck and Walker's goal of including Medicaid expansion in the final deal, but Walker said he's still optimistic that legislators will allow a bill to do that to pass.
"I'm a big fan of the legislative process, and we're still thinking of ways of doing that," he said.
House and Senate leaders said they want majorities of their caucuses to support a Medicaid bill before they'll let one come to the floor for a vote.