LANSING ? Michigan budgets will remain similar to those that were approved at the subcommittee level, House Appropriations chair Rep. Scott Hummel (R-DeWitt) said Monday, as both houses are preparing major budget work this week.

The full panel is scheduled to meet on the omnibus bill (HB 5795) at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee is meeting on a series of budget bills at 1 p.m., Tuesday.

Legislative leaders are shooting for mid-June to complete work on the 2006-07 budget. Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema (R-Wyoming) has said, through his spokesperson, that he wants all action on the budget – including negotiations on targets with Governor Jennifer Granholm – completed by June 15.

Hummel said some technical changes will be made concerning the budgets and that the further adoptions made to welfare policy by the House last week will also be reflected in the Department of Human Services budget.

For a supplement to the current fiscal year, the House added more restrictions and disqualifications to able-bodied adults receiving cash assistance, including bumping up the sanction schedule from 12 to 24 months for a third violation of work requirements, as well as taking people off the system who have murder, rape, robbery, child molestation convictions or a drug felony since 1997.

Hummel said it’s the intent of both legislative leaders in the House and Senate to finish out their budgets this week and to sit down after that to work out differences amongst the chambers’ appropriations.

Leaders are then looking to mid-June for those disagreements to be worked out and finalize target agreements with the administration by the end of June, he said.

When asked if that kind of fast-paced schedule has ever happened, Hummel said “a couple times in the past 23 years.”

Ari Adler, spokesperson for Sikkema, said ending in late June is too late for the majority leader. It is possible to complete all action on the budget in just over three weeks.

For that to happen, however, agreements have to be reached with the administration on budget targets, and Adler said no negotiations have been scheduled as yet.

Both the House and Senate have not scheduled session for July and August, except for the Senate, which has a tentative session day set a week before the primary. The 2006-2007 fiscal year begins in 132 days.

But Rep. Rich Brown (D-Bessemer), the ranking Democrat on Appropriations, said while “the potential is there to move everything out,” he thinks budget target groups will most likely meet throughout the summer.

To his knowledge, Brown said Republican leaders have not worked with the administration yet on the budgets formally and there are conflicts between the House versions and the Senate, as well as the executive office.

Brown said the welfare reforms and the university funding formula will again be points of difference (last year, the agreement budget took out welfare reforms and while a funding formula was used for state universities, the appropriations to different schools were based somewhat on increased floor funding).

Another discrepancy between parties concerns the cuts to prisoner education under the Department of Corrections budget, and the deletion (except for a placeholder) of Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s proposal to provide uninsured residents with coverage under a federal Medicaid waiver, Brown said.

While everybody would like to wrap up the budgets before the 4th of July, Brown said in his tenure he hasn’t seen it happen.

Greg Bird, spokesperson for the State Budget Office, said the schedule “is certainly possible,” but once officials sit down to conduct budget target agreements “it can take two days or two months.”

Legislative leaders have not formally sat down with the administration to discuss the budgets as they are still before each chamber, Bird said, but at this point, there are differences that have surfaced in the budgets and will have to be worked out.

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