ANNAPOLIS (AP) - Negotiations on Maryland's $25.6 billion state budget reached a stalemate in Annapolis Monday when Senate fiscal leaders refused to go along with a House of Delegates plan to cut the state property tax.

Members of the budget conference committee met briefly in the morning before breaking off talks for the day.

Lack of an agreement meant the General Assembly could not meet the midnight deadline Monday for completing work on the budget, but there was no practical effect of missing the deadline. Lawmakers have one more week before the 2005 session ends to pass a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Senate negotiators said they objected to reducing the tax rate because the state can't afford it at a time when Maryland is facing potential budget holes of hundreds of millions of dollars in future years.

"I think the voters of Maryland would want us to be more fiscally responsible," Sen. Ulysses Currie, D-Prince George's, said.

House members submitted two compromise proposals, but both were rejected by Senate negotiators, leading some House members to question whether Senate leaders, especially Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, D-Prince George's, had a hidden agenda for refusing to budge on the property tax issue.

"The Senate president is creating an artificial crisis for his own agenda, whatever that might be," Delegate Peter Franchot, D-Montgomery, chairman of the House budget subcommittee, said. He said Miller might be trying to use the budget for leverage to get House concessions on a slot machine bill.

House Speaker Michael Busch, D-Anne Arundel, would not speculate on why the Senate was refusing to compromise on the property tax issue.

"For the life of me, I don't understand why Republican senators and conservative Democrats in the Senate seem opposed to this initiative," he said.

Asked if he had a hidden agenda, Miller said, "There are more holes in this budget than in Swiss cheese."

"What we need to do is be responsible and solve the state's problems and not try to politic in a nonpolitical year," he said.

Senate budget negotiators said they believe the tax cut would jeopardize the state's fiscal future while doing little to help taxpayers.

The tax cut proposed by the House would save the owner of property valued at $400,000 "enough money to fill up his SUV two or three times," Currie said.

The state property tax had been maintained at 8.4 cents per $100 of assessed value from 1981 until two years ago, when Gov. Robert Ehrlich proposed an increase to 13.2 cents as part of a plan of budget cuts and fee increases to keep the state budget balanced.

Ehrlich included money in next year's budget to cut the rate by one cent, and the budget passed by the House last month would have restored the tax to its pre-2003 level of 8.4 cents.