OLYMPIA -- With speculation mounting that the Legislature will need a second special session to finish all work on the budget, Gov. Chris Gregoire is stepping up her Shermanesque statements.

"I'm not calling them back," she said when the standard question about the prospects of another overtime session came up at today's bill-signing ceremony.

For the past week, she's offered a different answer,  insisting a second special session "is not in my vocabulary". She's been meeting with legislative leaders off and on, and perhaps some people were thinking she'd picked up the phrase from one of them.

The reason for a second session would be the same as the reason for this one, that the Legislature didn't adopt the 2011-13 budgets and all the legislation needed to make them work. So if she's not calling them back, what would she do come July 1, when the state starts a new fiscal year?

"When they get ready to pass a budget, they can let me know," she said. "We're not going to sit here. People are just going to have to compromise."

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