By Steve Wiegand
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Legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger defused an issue today that threatened to blow up a fragile compromise over the plan to erase the state's $26.3-billion budget deficit.

Instead, Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said both houses would vote on the plan Thursday night - but without an element that would prescribe details of a $1.2 billion cut in spending on prisons. A vote on that part of the plan will be delayed until next month, the leaders said.

"Everything's on track," said Steinberg, after he and Bass met privately with Schwarzenegger in his office. The governor popped out after the Democratic leaders left to dismiss the issue as just one of "some hiccups, and some obstacles and bumps in the road ... there will be some difficult moments, but the bottom line is we are going to get this budget done."

This particular hiccup was triggered by a proposal to pare down the state's bulging prison population by as many as 27,000 prisoners through actions that range from moving old and sick inmates out of prisons and into hospitals or care homes, to not sending parolees back to prison for low-level offenses.

Although Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders were on board with the plan, Republican leaders objected to voting on any budget-balancing plan that included what might be viewed as early release of criminals.

Assembly GOP leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo sent out an angry e-mail to his caucus Tuesday, accusing Democrats of double-crossing Republicans by trying to jam something into the budget-balancing plan that wasn't agreed to by GOP leaders in private negotiations. Blakeslee warned Republicans would not put up the necessary votes to give the plan the two-thirds approval it needs to take effect immediately.

This afternoon, however, Blakeslee said he was "gratified" that the prison-depopulating issue would be postponed.

"There was an effort by some to try and make that happen (now,)" he said, "which was not consistent with the agreement" made by leaders and the governor. Asked if he thought Democrats had tried to pull a fast one, or whether it had been a misunderstanding, Blakeslee said, "I'm more than happy to give everyone the benefit of the doubt."

Steinberg said there was no intent on the part of Democrats or the governor to change the prison plan next month. But Blakeslee said Republican lawmakers were developing a counterproposal to reducing prison populations that "the public and law enforcement community will be very welcoming to."