That's what Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, told reporters at noon Thursday during her weekly news conference.

"By the time the budget comes out . . . major pieces of it should already be agreed to," she said.

That would be a departure from years past, when an entire $70 billion two-year budget has been dumped on rank-and-file lawmakers, reporters, stateholders and lobbyist, then hurriedly voted on before most of us even understood it.

"This isn't like any other year," Brown said.

If this does, indeed, come to pass, I'd have to give credit to Democratic sympathizers who have been complaining about "shadow boxing" with rumored cuts. And I have to give Brown credit for taking some risks. Majority Democrats' job of writing a budget in the face of an $8 billion deficit (25 percent of state revenues) is going to be that much more difficult if stakeholders get early warning on how deep cuts will be for their particular programs.

[More:]

That's one big reason that, in the past, everything has been kept pretty much hush-hush. As soon as word gets out, interest groups intensify their lobbying of their most friendly lawmakers and the budget deal can rapidly unravel. Not to mention that minority Republicans will go on the attack, saying "You shoulda done this, instead." So, that's the risk Brown is taking.

As for taxes, Brown has stayed on message since, oh, about November.

"We're not looking at tax and revenue options now. . . .we're still looking at cuts," she said -- again -- yesterday.

Brown talked about some of those cuts in a general way. Elder services will be cut. The Basic Health Plan, state subsidized coverage for low-income families (mostly kids), will be reduced. "We hope the reductions will not be as large as they are in the governor's budget," she said.

Some education programs that are not part of "basic education" will be cut, too. And the lower reiumbursement rates for nursing homes, which were approved in the "belt-tightening" bill passed last week, probably are here to stay for a couple years.

"I imagine most of the reductions will carry forward," Brown said, adding she is "not 100 percent sure of that."

As for the Supreme Court's "decision not to decide" whether tax increases do, indeed, take a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, Brown said she still thinks Initiative 960 is invalid. But she isn't planning anytime soon to come up with a better test case on the measure that would prod the justices into making a decision.

As for the collective sigh of relief (which I said I heard from majority Democrats yesterday), I should have added this:

"That decision doesn't change the outcome of where we're heading..." Brown said. "Any major revenue option would have been presented to the voters anyway, regardless of the ruling."