Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles explaining the budgeting process for different governmental entities.

DES MOINES — Legislators started haggling over Iowa’s fiscal 2010 budget from nearly the moment Gov. Chet Culver submitted it. But what many residents probably don’t realize is that the process started last fall.

Iowa’s budget begins, as most government budgets do, with a series of requests from different departments. Those requests rarely find their way into the final product, but the departments give the governor’s office a starting point.

Iowa follows a fiscal year that begins July 1 and ends June 30 of the following year. The initial department requests are due Oct. 1, a scant two months after the fiscal year begins. That means, in the words of House Appropriations Chair Jo Oldson, D-Des Moines, that the budget process “never really ends.”

“It’s a process that I didn’t create,” she said, laughing.

Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, doesn’t like the state’s approach to budgeting, and he isn’t laughing.

“The process, coming out of the private sector, the process is pretty flawed,” he said. McKinley said there are too many closed-room deals and negotiations. He said Democrats are responsible now, but that “both parties have been guilty of the same budget practices.”

The budget requests set the stage for a revenue estimating conference that evaluates how much money the state is likely to receive from taxes and other sources of income. The conference must take place by Dec. 15.

Iowa’s governor must present the Legislature with a proposed budget in January. That’s where the work the public sees begins.

“The Legislature’s role, once we get the governor’s budget, is to go through and lay out what we believe should be in there,” said state Rep. John Whitaker, D-Hillsboro. “We’ll use that as a basis and evaluate each program on its merits.”

The governor’s proposal doesn’t always have the same weight. There are years when the Legislature takes it and passes a recognizable version later in the session. Other years see the Legislature toss out the governor’s plans and create their own.

Joint legislative committees from both the Iowa House and Senate hammer out a budget proposal for the full Legislature during January and February. That’s a critical difference between the state and the federal government.

“In the federal government budget bills are required to be started in the House,” said House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha.

Both the House and Senate must agree on the same legislation to create a budget. That can require more than one try, since the legislative bodies frequently have different ideas. Once they agree, the budget goes back to the governor.