The Budget Conference Committee, chaired by Senator Denise Moreno Ducheny, began its reconciliation process yesterday. Essentially the process entails representatives from the Senate and Assembly to get together and resolve all of the differences in their respective budget proposals. They will be meeting daily for hours and hours going line by line through a document in excess of 500 pages. But it seems highly unlikely that they will meet the Constitutionally mandated deadline of June 15th. In fact, according to the Dept. of Finance, the Legislature hasn’t passed a budget on time since 1987.

What about the Enterprise Zone program? It does not appear as a specific item to be debated in the Joint Committee context even though both budget versions call for new revenue (euphemistic language for tax increases) and the closing of “tax loopholes” (dysphemistic language for tax incentives).

However, that is not the end of the story. As described in this valuable summary of the budget process by the Dept. of Finance, there are still two major opportunities for tinkering with the budget beyond the Conference Committee: the “Big 5″ and trailer bills. According to the DOF, “Sometimes the Conference Committee does not reach final resolution on the budget. This stalemate typically results from non-resolution of a few major issues. These issues are then resolved by the “Leadership” or “Big 5″ (Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, President Pro Tempore, and the minority leaders of both houses).” And then, “There are generally budget changes proposed by the Governor or the Legislature which necessitate changes to existing law in order to implement the budget changes. If this is the case, separate bills are introduced to implement the change. These budget implementation bills are called “trailer bills” and are heard concurrently with the Budget Bill.”

Then there is the NIC List. There is not a lot of information available about the nature of this mysterious budget tool. NIC stands for “Not In Conference” and the list is the place where budget items get placed that are not discussed in the light of day within the Conference Committee but nevertheless end up in trailer bills and then the final budget. If there is someone who has it out for the Enterprise Zone program, for example, this is the likely venue to deal with it.

There’s plenty here to make for a very interesting summer.