House Majority Leader Eddie Farnsworth has formed four working groups to begin developing budget proposals for fiscal 2005 and says he plans to have a budget ready for a vote by March 19.

“We should have a budget that we’ll agree to,” said Mr. Farnsworth, R-Dist. 22.

In the Senate, Nick Simonetta, Senate spokesman, says Senate President Ken Bennett, R-Dist. 1, is holding regular budget meetings with Sen. Jack Brown, D-Dist. 5, the Senate Democratic leader, and the Senate Appropriations Committee is working on budget recommendations.

At the beginning of the session, legislative leaders set of goal of having a budget to the governor by March 16.

Governor Napolitano has recommended spending $7.29 billion in fiscal 2005, which begins July 1, while the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has projected spending $7.26 billion. JLBC reports that the governor’s recommendations spend $222 million more and create a revenue shortfall of $555 million.

Mr. Farnsworth says the House working groups are the result of meetings he held with members of the House Republican caucus.

“They said they wanted to be involved, but not in large groups,” he said.

He said he has assigned Reps. Deb Gullett, R-Dist. 11; Joe Hart, R-Dist. 3; John Huppenthal, R-Dist. 20; and John Nelson, R-Dist. 12, as group facilitators.

“I’ve told them I want them to be facilitators and not chairmen,” said Mr. Farnsworth.

He added that he had not given the facilitators any guidelines about how often to meet, what areas to cover or how to develop their proposals.

“A lot of this is up to them,” he said.

Mr. Farnsworth said he has set a deadline of three weeks – the week of March 8-12 – for the groups to come up with proposals.

“It will probably take a week then to pull them together,” he said. —