The General Assembly may or may not have a budget deal today. That's up in the air as of this writing. However, one thing about the legislative budget process is dead-level certain -- it's largely a backroom sport. Key decisions are made in unannounced meetings, with scant public debate.

Some legislative leaders don't want the public looking in on the process, not if they can think of even a semi-plausible excuse to exclude us. On Thursday, they couldn't come up with even that much.

When an N&O reporter tried to enter a budget-related meeting of House and Senate leaders, he was run out. The excluder-in-chief was Democratic state Sen. Tony Rand, the Senate majority leader. Rand justified barring the reporter by saying the session wasn't really budget-related -- although budget negotiators were the only ones on hand, plus Governor Easley's money man, Dan Gerlach. "Talking about the budget," Gerlach noted as he left.

The budget news, apparently, was that state revenues will be $70 million below what had been expected. That makes the negotiations harder and affects everything from tax breaks to agency allocations. Under closed-door government, you'd never know it.

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