By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — State spending priorities for the next fiscal year and a framework for appropriating an projected $300 million surplus will be finalized by week’s end and the Legislature is on track to recess April 9, Senate leaders said Tuesday.

Senate President Pro Tem Bob Johnson, D-Bigelow, told reporters after the Senate session that $50 million of the surplus is expected to be set aside for the Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund, which is used to attract new industries.

Johnson also said some of the surplus will be used to fill in gaps in the state’s proposed balanced budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The Beebe administration last week reduced its estimated revenue for fiscal 2009-2010 by $100 million, and Gov. Mike Beebe has proposed using about that amount of the surplus to help make up the  difference.

Johnson said he did not know how much of the surplus would be available for state senators through the General Improvement Fund bill, but he said the current plan includes senators directing the money through four or five state agencies for general improvement projects.

The Senate on Tuesday approved more than 200 bills appropriating money from the surplus for various projects. Not all of them will be funded in the General Improvement Fund bill expected to be completed late this week, said Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee.

Also to be completed is the Revenue Stabilization Act, end-of-the-session legislation that sets state spending priorities. The law prohibits deficit spending and serves as the guideline for cuts in the event revenues fall short of projections.

“Later this week the RSA and the GIF should be out and we’re going to close this thing up,” Baker told the budget committee Tuesday.