State budget: Hope, a flare-up amid quiet at the Capitol

Albany -- If there was one certainty at the state Capitol on Saturday it was this: Some lawmakers would be attending morning church services — and perhaps brunch — in town on Sunday, but there would not be a new state budget before then.

With the midnight April 1 deadline for a new spending plan blown, legislators hunkered down for hours at conference tables to continue discussing pieces of the budget that they've been talking about for much of the past week.

Around 6 p.m., senators began to file out of the building, some headed to watch Final Four basketball with a return for actual session "unlikely" according to a Republican majority spokesman. Assembly majority Democrats began to trickle out of the building roughly an hour later.

Senate Republicans are due back for a conference meeting around noon. The Assembly Democrats are not set to meet until 4 p.m.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/State-budget-Hope-a-flare-up-amid-quiet-at-the-11043923.php