HARRISBURG -- Ninety-nine days into a state budget impasse, lawmakers are still squabbling with each other and the governor over how to raise some $27.8 billion and over how to spend it.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 43-6 for Senate Bill 1085, a $27.8 billion budget for fiscal 2009-10. Two House Democratic leaders don't agree with one facet of the spending package and, in an unusual move, are lashing out at Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell for supporting it.

In a letter to Mr. Rendell yesterday, the two leaders objected to a provision that would allow the governor to spend $12 million at his discretion on items such as violence reduction, cultural preservation and health clinics.

"That is not acceptable," reads a blunt statement in a letter signed by House Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, and Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne.

Their caucus promptly responded to the Senate's budget approval by putting a competing budget bill, House Bill 1416, back in play, disbanding a bicameral conference committee that controlled the legislation.

With the bill now back under House jurisdiction, Democratic leaders intend to amend the legislation into something they hope can pass both chambers by week's end. The House is expected to vote on it today. The aim is to transfer the $12 million in discretionary funding -- often termed "walking-around money" -- to broader-based programs that they say help vulnerable Pennsylvanians, hospitals and children.

"We cannot support a plan that would divert money from broad-based programs for discretionary spending on targeted projects," Mr. Evans and Mr. Eachus wrote in their letter to the governor.

Said House Democratic caucus spokesman Bill Thomas: "We are pennies away from an agreement and this is the big issue."

Moving the bill out of the conference committee is the fastest way to get a budget passed by both chambers, Mr. Thomas said.

House Republican spokesman Steve Miskin said the action puts another option into play for passing a budget that's now almost 100 days overdue.

His boss, Republican Leader Sam Smith of Punxsutawney, said he's pleased that the latest spending figure in the Senate version of the budget is down about $110 million from the last.

"I'm not ready to say we [House Republicans] support this version, but it's getting closer to where my caucus can put support behind it. It's come down enough to pique my interest," he said.

Both budget proposals rely on the addition of about $1 billion in new revenue. Nearly a quarter of that figure would come from adding table games to existing and planned casinos.

Other new revenue in the Senate budget would come from delaying for two years a planned phase-out of a tax on business assets; approving a 25-cent per pack hike in the cigarette tax; increased leasing of state land for natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus shale region of the state; and a tax amnesty program aimed at encouraging scofflaws to pay up.

The increased gas-drilling proposal faces opposition from lawmakers including state Rep. David Levdansky, D-Forward, who denounced the plan yesterday during a news conference attended by several dozen environmental and sportsmen's groups.

There are environmental dangers from opening up "several hundred thousand more acres" of valuable state forest land to drilling, said Mr. Levdansky, who is a hunter and a fisherman. "We cannot risk the rape of the most valuable forest system in the U.S. ... Those scars can never be erased."

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