MADISON - Supporters of regional transit have always known it was a sensitive issue. It could go a long way to explaining why the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee couldn't start its meeting on time Thursday.

The committee was supposed to vote on Gov. Jim Doyle's proposal for establishing regional transit authorities and giving them the authority to levy a 0.5 percent sales tax to fund transit projects.

Thursday's meeting was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. By 8:30 p.m., a hearing room filled with lobbyists waited for committee members to show up. They didn't.

Of all the issues on the budget writing committee's agenda, the most significant and the one that required the most negotiating among senators on the committee was regional transit.

Assembly Democrats on the 16-member committee, including Rep. Cory Mason of Racine, found themselves all on the same page early on.

"I still remain optimistic that we can reach consensus with the Senate and Assembly sometime before dawn," Mason said Thursday night.

The support mustered by Assembly Democrats on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee eluded Senate members for most of the day Thursday. Mason didn't expect negotiations to last 10 hours.

"I think it speaks to the importance of the issue that we're trying to get it right," Mason said.

The four Republicans on the Finance Committee, including Rep. Robin Vos of Caledonia, said they supported the idea of RTAs, but not without some form of referendum allowing taxpayers to vote on them.

Vos said he hoped to offer an amendment to put RTAs up for referendum in communities where they're being proposed, like the one that would include parts of Racine County, east of Interstate 94.

Vos and his Republican colleagues said Thursday they're not opposed to RTAs as a tool for economic development. They didn't like Doyle's proposed funding mechanism - up to a 0.5 percent sales tax in communities that join RTAs.

"The question really comes down to whether or not we think the people should be deciding to increase their own taxes or if politicians should be able to do it either from a faraway Capitol in Madison or by a local elected board that most people will never know have taken the action until long after it has passed," Vos said.

Democrats have Republicans scratching their heads, since Sen. John Lehman of Racine has voiced his opposition to using a sales tax to fund transit projects in southeastern Wisconsin.

Lehman has taken a fairly hard stance against increasing the sales tax, which is pretty unpopular in Racine County, Vos said.

"We're not really sure exactly what their position is going to be, but ours is fairly clear: If a requirement is going to be put on to create an RTA, the funding source should be decided by the taxpayers who live in that municipality, not, once again, by politicians being lobbied by high-priced attorneys and lobbyists trying to get something slipped into the budget," Vos said.

When asked who supported RTA in Racine County, Vos said the only supporters were "business elites," not the constituents he talks to.

That's not how regional transit supporters see it, according to Kerry Thomas, executive director of Transit NOW, a Milwaukee-area group pushing for regional transit projects, including the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail, among others.

Thomas helped coordinate a meeting between several groups that support regional transit in Racine.

Nick Whitman, executive director of the Racine Education Association, Ken Lumpkin, president of the Racine Interfaith Coalition and Kerry Thomas, executive director of Transit NOW, were among a group that met with Lehman prior to today's meeting of the Joint Finance Committee.

"People want to see it go forward. They understand RTAs are a necessity, it's just, how are we going to go forward," Thomas said.

Supporters were optimistic that the proposal for the RTA that would include Racine, Milwaukee and Kenosha counties could make it out of Thursday's budget hearing, but was likely to be amended.

While some supporters have said that failure to pass Doyle's budget proposal would kill the regional transit plans in southeast Wisconsin, Thomas didn't consider the situation to be quite so stark. The proposal to use a sales tax was crucial though, Thomas said, especially if local RTAs want to tap into federal funding.

"We might not have this political set up down the road. We'll never see this kind of federal funding again," Thomas said. "We have this great opportunity that we can't let go by. If we don't do this, it's going to go by."