The majority parties in the divided General Assembly have different budget priorities, and the result is something that’s looking a lot like deadlock. Bob Lewis explains for the Associated Press:

Two days ahead of the scheduled end to this year’s legislative session, bickering teams of budget negotiators had no deal Thursday and each blamed the other for it.

After a promising exchange of proposals Wednesday evening, bargaining over the two-year, $78 billion state spending turned peevish Thursday morning.

Even though there was almost no monetary difference in the competing proposals, House and Senate negotiators fought it out with barbed claims in dueling news conferences.

The differences are divergent priorities on relatively small funding items and a dispute over the “methodology” for funding public schools. The intemperate tone the talks assumed Thursday, however, makes it possible that the General Assembly, for the third time in four years, won’t finish its work on time.

Each chamber has a team of a half dozen negotiators, and those dozen legislators have been working on hammering out an agreement, but things are clearly not going well.