Daniels to outline budget in live broadcast-WEB ONLY

Gov. Mitch Daniels will outline his latest budget proposal to Indiana residents during a live television broadcast tonight at 6 p.m., a day before going over the plan with lawmakers.

Daniels’ office said Friday that the remarks will only last about 5 minutes. Tomorrow, a formal budget presentation will be made to a legislative committee.

Daniels has been traveling around Indiana talking about the state’s finances, but he hasn’t dropped many hints as to exactly what his budget proposal might include when it’s released.

One thing is certain, though – cobbling together a new budget before the end of June won’t be easy. New state revenue projections released this week show that Indiana will take in $1.1 billion less through June 2011 than previously expected.

“We need to be extremely cautions about our spending,” the Republican governor said Thursday at the Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce.

Daniels has said he hopes to avoid cuts to his top priorities – education, public safety and the protection of children.

A lean budget that Daniels proposed in January would have cut spending for most state agencies by 8 percent, cut higher education operating costs by 4 percent and kept funding for public schools essentially flat. Democrats and education lobbyists said keeping funding flat for public schools would amount to a cut since education costs are rising.

Daniels said the new budget will be similar to his previous proposal, only skimpier.

“We’ll go back to January’s budget and make it a little tighter,” he said at a Plymouth Chamber of Commerce luncheon Thursday.

Daniels has repeatedly said that the state needs to hold onto its reserves in case the economy gets even worse. But he isn’t ruling out dipping into the state’s piggy bank a bit to help complete the budget.

“We must maintain sufficient reserves to protect against drastic cuts or significant tax increases,” he said.

Lawmakers in the Democrat-led House and GOP-ruled Senate hope to use Daniels’ budget proposal as a starting point for budget negotiations.

The Senate approved a budget during the regular session, but the proposal didn’t pass the House, where Democrats said it spent too little and Republicans said it spent too much. To keep the state’s reserves at current levels, lawmakers would have to shave $1 billion off that budget proposal.

Daniels has not yet announced when the special session will begin, but legislative leaders are hoping to be called in around June 15. If lawmakers can’t agree on a new budget by the time the current budget expires on June 30, the Legislative Services Agency says that most of state government would shut down unless legislation is passed to continue spending at current levels.

Daniels said he’s confident a budget agreement can be reached by then.

“There would be no excuse for not doing it,” he said.