A difficult compromise.

Byline: The Register-Guard

In the end, the Oregon House and Senate did what members knew they'd have to do - split the difference, and agree on a state budget for the two-year period that began this month. The budget deal announced Monday won't be greeted by cheers, but lawmakers avoided delivering major disappointments. The marvel is that it took so long to bridge disagreements that have long looked amenable to compromise.

House and Senate negotiators met with Gov. Ted Kulongoski for more than two weeks, working their way through 200 separate budget items. The big one was the budget for kindergarten through 12th grade schools, which will receive $5.24 billion - an increase of 8 percent over the previous two years. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, had pushed for a $5.27 billion budget for public schools; the Republican-led House wanted a $5.22 billion figure.

The $50 million difference meant that the House and Senate positions were less than 1 percent apart - no great distance in a Legislature supposedly riven by a deep partisan divide. And if greater-than-expected income from the Common School Fund and a special appropriation contingent on economic growth are included, the budget for schools grows to $5.3 billion. At the beginning of the legislative session, the schools were said to need $5.3 billion to maintain their current level of services.

Oregon should not be content with the current level of services in its educational system - a level that leaves many districts with some of the nation's shortest school years and biggest class sizes. But given the House leadership's pledge to resist any and all tax increases, and both chambers' agreement in March to a $12.4 billion total spending cap, this budget cycle was not going to see a rebuilding of the public school system. The best that could be hoped for was an end to the erosion of the past half-decade.

Other points in the budget agreement are similar: could be better, could be worse. Tuition at Oregon universities will rise by an average of 3 percent a year, but a grant program for low-income students will be significantly expanded. A program for reporting pesticide use will be funded for the first time, but not in a way that will permit detailed tracking. A variety of threatened programs - Head Start, community corrections, portions of the Oregon Health Plan, passenger rail service between Eugene and Portland - have been rescued from the chopping block.

Legislative budget-makers have agreed, in short, on a business-as-usual spending plan for the next two years. Producing such a result, neither shockingly bad nor spectacularly good, was more difficult than expected, given the fact that Oregon's improving economy has caused periodic upward revisions in the amount available for spending.

Much remains to be done before the Legislature can conclude what will probably be the second-longest session in history. Several major pieces of legislation await action - including bills establishing a budgetary reserve, improving statewide transportation systems and requiring that mental illness be treated the same as other diseases for insurance purposes. The budget deal clears the way for a resolution of these issues. The end is in sight, and the pattern has been set: Split control of the Legislature results in an exhausting struggle to reach middle ground.