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Crunch time arrives for state budget Interest groups are gearing up, too. Lobbyists for public employee unions are preparing lists of what they want to preserve in social programs like Medi-Cal, the state's health care program for the poor. There is still a ways to go before a final budget, however. After what's certain to be a long debate featuring Republicans denouncing the Democratic budget proposal as unbalanced and Democrats saying the same about their critics, a document will eventually be passed by the Assembly. The more collegial Senate, at least in the past, has recognized the first vote on the budget as mainly a procedural matter and approved the bill with little acrimony. After the two competing spending plans are passed, a special six-member committee is created with three members each from the Assembly and Senate. The labor-intensive task of the budget "conference committee" is to merge the two spending plans. While that happens, closed-door talks will most likely occur between Davis and the two GOP and two Democratic leaders of the Legislature. As more and more institutional knowledge is stripped from the Legislature by term limits, a heavier share of budget settlement has fallen on the so- called "Big Five." E-mail Greg Lucas at glucas@sfchronicle.com.
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