Along with the human services needs, legislators secured funding for cultural programs, such as $400,000 to help with the relocation of Ogden's Treehouse Museum and $50,000 for the Moab Music Festival. There was also $50,000 for additional archaeological work at Range Creek in east-central Utah and $25,000 for the Utah Summer Games.

When asked if some of the requests qualified as pork-barrel spending — as well as previously approved appropriations of $5 million for the relocation of some agricultural buildings at Utah State University and $2 million for the Children's Museum — Hillyard joked that "in Logan, we call it beef, not pork," but then emphasized that every request can be justified as worthy.

Democrats did relatively well in getting some of their many unfunded requests covered, including $250,000 to help treat people with bleeding disorders, $59,900 for an outreach officer for the Internet Crimes Task Force and $50,000 for an organ donation tax credit.

"We did pretty well with our fiscal-note bills, although there are still some that we hope can get funded at the last minute," said House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, R-Salt Lake. "It's the same process we've used the past few years, and it allows us to talk them out and find some common ground."

Two bills, each with a $13,000 price tag and prioritized by the Senate, may not actually get funding, despite the support of senators. One of those, SB109, would make it a primary offense to not wear a seat belt and has never even made it to the House floor for debate in previous years. Another, SB67, which would require people registering to vote to prove their U.S. citizenship, may be pulled back from the House by its sponsor, Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi.

In passing the budget bills, legislative leaders had to fend off attempts to shift money out of the Rainy Day and transportation funds to cover other requests, most notably $4.5 million for a new Veterans Nursing Home in northern Utah. Motions to pull that money out of the $30 million in one-time transportation funding were stopped in the House, however.

"We've gone a little crazy trying to spend money today," said House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-Provo. "You may think there's a lot of money for transportation, but it's still not enough."

The only amendment actually made to HB301, which budgets the new ongoing revenue and one-time revenue for fiscal year 2006, was to shift $2 million from the Rainy Day Fund to pay for the "Jobs Now" initiative, which trains people for specific jobs. The amended bill passed 59-12.

In the Senate, one amendment was made to the unanimously passed SB1, which spends supplemental one-time money in fiscal year 2005, which ends June 30. That amendment shifted $485,000 from the $48 million for the Marriott Library renovation at the University of Utah to the U.'s Museum of Fine Arts.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com