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Three days left. Two and a half now.

The Capitol today is a funny mix of busy and not that busy. The House and Senate floor calendars are getting longer and longer, and taped-together reports reach to the floor when they get pinned up on bulletin boards. But the list of committee hearings is slim. Today, it’s pretty much down to the two Finance Committees and a small handful of others.

There’s some negotiating going on for sure, but it seems to be mostly on budget stuff -- what to put in the capital budget, whether to move a transportation bond package and what to include in it, or whether to vote against the budget if you’re in the minority. (At least one majority member in the House, Rep. John Coghill of North Pole, has been talking about voting against the capital budget because of its overall size, but as far as I can tell, it’s unlikely that any will -- it pretty much means getting booted from the majority.)

Lots of personal bills are still in play, too. But it’s nothing like the end of last session, when lawmakers pushed hard right to the end to pass major legislation dealing with PERS/TRS, education funding, and revenue sharing. Then, the end-game politics were exciting and out in the open.

Now there’s speculation that lawmakers could actually finish a little early -- they have till midnight Sunday -- but it’s hard to imagine that those with personal bills just a few steps away from passing will give up before the end.