CHEYENNE - The Wyoming House and Senate voted Friday to split the $340 million available for local government funding, allocating half according to the House formula and half according to the Senate plan.

Both the House and Senate approved the $3.5 billion budget bill, which now goes to Gov. Dave Freudenthal. He will likely receive it on Monday and will have three days to decide whether to line-item veto any items. The legislative session is scheduled to adjourn on Friday.

"On most items, we more or less split the difference between the House and the Senate," said Rep. Frank Philp, R-Shoshoni, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

The budget bill includes $200 million in state funding for the state highway department for road projects.

The bill also calls for giving the state's seven community colleges authority to raise and spend nearly $80 million to construct dormitories. It would not put up state money for the work.

House Speaker Roy Cohee, R-Casper, said Friday that the conference committee process to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget over the past few days went smoothly.

"There weren't a lot of divisions, there were just some differences in philosophy in both houses," Cohee said. "In most cases, I think they cherry-picked some things that both houses were somewhat favored to. But in some of the larger items, like the distribution model for local governments, that was kind of a compromise between both houses."

The Joint Appropriations Committee started work on crafting the budget in December. Cohee said the budget bill has been the top legislative priority this session.

"We came around to the realization that this is a budget session; the budget is the big bill," Cohee said. "And we'll work on other things when we can."

State financial experts have predicted essentially flat revenues for the coming two years, meaning that the state didn't have much extra money this session to allocate to new projects. That left the issue of how to divide local government funding as the main focus this year.