[N]egotiations between the House and Senate over delaying forced mergers under Act 46 have further deteriorated.

Talks were at a standstill at the end of last week, but Senate Education Committee chair Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, who has been leading negotiations for the upper chamber, now says he intends to ask the Senate to vote to discharge the committee tasked with brokering a deal entirely so that a new committee can be created.

In an interview, Baruth called the latest proposal put forward by House conferees “slightly mind-blowing” and “proof of what we have felt in the past weeks — which is that they don’t want to reach compromise.”

Discussions blew up Friday after the two sides met for the sixth time, this time to discuss a new plan proposed by the House. In committee, Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, described the deal – which would give just three groups of districts the option to delay – as a “simpler, cleaner policy approach.”

But Baruth noted that the plan gave substantially fewer districts the option to postpone merging compared to legislation passed by the House in February. And it was even further from the Senate’s position, which is that nearly all districts should get the delay.

“What you’re saying is that you don’t want to get to the middle. You want to go further from your own body, from us. By definition, that’s not going to the middle. That’s going the other way in a way that I’ve never seen a conference committee go,” he told Conlon.

Conlon replied that his proposal had been an attempt to address criticism from Senate lawmakers – particularly Baruth – that the House’s former position appeared to reward the most recalcitrant districts. And he argued that much had happened since the House initially passed its version of H.39.

“I think most members of the House would acknowledge the time that has passed and the progress that’s been made,” Conlon said.

The ground has shifted significantly since legislation to delay mergers was first introduced and debated at the Statehouse. But lawmakers in both chambers appear to have interpreted the changing landscape in profoundly different ways.

On the House side, legislators like Conlon note that a judge has issued two rulings in the state’s favor in court challenges to Act 46. And they say the vast majority of school districts facing forced mergers are on track – even if reluctantly – to meet the July 1 deadline currently in law. The state’s Agency of Education and the Vermont School Boards Association are both now unequivocally against delay.

But on the Senate side, legislators like Baruth say that some districts surely won’t be ready in time. And they say that forcing the most contentious mergers through in a compressed time frame could create even more animosity toward consolidated boards.

The concern over default budgets has further complicated matters. In normal situations, districts that cannot get a budget approved by their voters come July 1 are allowed to borrow a certain amount based on their prior year’s budget. But newly unified districts did not exist last year, and so do not have a prior year’s budget as a baseline.

A remedy was supposed to be included in the delay bill. But Baruth has said that he’d be unwilling to legislate a fix to default budgets without a delay. And Conlon, meanwhile, indicated he would be open to consider just the opposite – default budgets without a delay.

“If that were a proposal we would definitely consider that strongly,” he said.

To disband the conference committee, both chambers would need to vote to form a new one. House officials also contend that such a request must first come from within the existing conference committee, via a report signed by two members from each chamber.

“The request to disband a Committee of Conference cannot simply be made by one member of the committee and decided by the chamber leaders,” said Katherine Levasseur, chief of staff to House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero.

On the Senate side, conference committee members are picked by the chamber’s Committee on Committees. In the House, that power rests with the Speaker.

Besides Baruth and Conlon, other committee members are Reps. Lawrence Cupoli, R-Rutland, and Dylan Giambatista, D-Essex Junction, and Sens. Andrew Perchlik, D-Washington, and Corey Parent, R-Franklin.

NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify the procedure for disbanding and reforming conference committees.