By Francis X. Quinn,Associated Press Writer

AUGUSTA – Budget negotiators followed up an angry breakup early Monday morning with a similarly rancorous adjournment hours later on Monday night as they prepared for a final showdown.

All signs pointed toward a party-line divide over how to replace a controversial state borrowing measure that has sparked a people’s veto petition drive.

Both sides say a net amount of $250 million would be needed to supplant a $450 million revenue bond provision in the pending state budget, which is scheduled to take effect for the July 1 onset of a new biennium.

Marathon committee sessions from Friday through Sunday produced reductions in spending of about $110 million in a developing Democratic package, according to the Appropriations Committee staff. By Monday night, Democrats said their booked savings approached $125 million.

The Democrats, who hold slim State House majorities, continued to challenge Republicans to offer a more detailed plan for accomplishing a borrowing replacement through spending cuts alone.

Republicans, in turn, said they were waiting for Democrats to disclose how they would use new revenue, presumably in large part from taxes, to close the gap.

A few items were taken up in a relatively brief search for common ground Monday, but basically both sides stuck to their trenches.

The rhetorical fireworks that twice left negotiators fuming came after an intense weekend of private negotiations and open deliberations at an otherwise empty State House involving House and Senate leaders, the Appropriations Committee, Gov. John Baldacci and a full complement of administration officials, carried out before an audience of several dozen lobbyists and other advocates for various causes and projects.

Leading into a new week that was supposed to be this Legislature’s last, the committee mood often appeared to be dour. Despite claims by ranking Democrats, it seemed that Wednesday’s adjournment target for the House and Senate would have to be scrapped.

Democrats, maintaining they remained open to new GOP suggestions for cutbacks, did not immediately disclose a strategy for proceeding in the absence of further budget trimming. But an on-and-off focus has been Maine’s cigarette tax.

Republicans, too, were not revealing much, although they have suggested curbs on human services programs would be natural to look at.

“We don’t have a magic bullet. It’s hard for us to get to $250 (million),” said Sen. Richard Nass, R-Acton.

Nass and Democratic Rep. Janet Mills of Farmington were protagonists in the early morning committee dustup over who should put forth what first. Echoing previous partisan confrontations, Mills charged the Republicans with failing to spell out an alternative to majority party plans, while Nass maintained that it was up to Democrats to propose a package and to Republicans to seek to amend it.

“I need to see line by line what it is you’re looking at,” Mills said shortly before the committee closed up for the weekend at about 1:30 a.m. Monday.

Replied Nass, using committee shorthand to reflect the partisan nature of the tallies up to that point: “We voted all day yesterday, 8-5.”

At the end of the day Monday, shortly before dark, Nass, backed by Republican Rep. Sawin Millett of Waterford, jousted with Mills and Democratic Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake.

Ironically, those four joined in the discussions about borrowing earlier this year that preceded the adoption of the much criticized revenue bonding provision.

“We will have a balanced budget,” Democratic Rep. Joseph Brannigan of Portland, the House chairman of the committee, said with emphasis shortly before the panel was let out Monday night.

“This is going nowhere tonight,” Millett said.

Some proceeds from the borrowing that lawmakers are seeking to replace had been earmarked for lowering the state’s pension liability and boosting reserves.

The biennial budget that was pushed through in late March by Democratic House and Senate majorities envisions General Fund appropriations of about $5.7 billion over two years.

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