HARRISBURG — Regimented work schedules and fines for tardiness?

These are some of the ideas being floated to break a string of five straight years during which Gov. Ed Rendell and the Legislature wrapped up a state budget after the fiscal year began.

This year's impasse wasn't the most protracted battle, but it was the first under Rendell that resulted in a shutdown of certain government services. The one-day furlough of nearly 24,000 state employees closed state parks, museums, historic sites and driver licensing centers July 9.

When he signed the $27.2 billion spending plan on Tuesday, Rendell insisted that the process, however painful, was worth it in the end.

But he also conceded there was room for improvement. Rendell said he would work with legislative leaders to devise schedules for completing work that looms in the fall — such as banning smoking in public buildings and workplaces, expanding state-subsidized health coverage for the uninsured and paying for environmental cleanups — as well as the 2008-09 budget next spring.

"I think that process gets cured by an earlier work schedule," he said at the bill signing. "If we want to comply — not only with the letter of the reform agenda, but the spirit — we have to start working earlier on this."

Trying to craft such a schedule could foment greater discord, however, especially with the Senate's Republican majority. GOP legislative leaders agree that the budget should have been passed earlier, but question the notion of consulting the governor on their work schedule.

"For the governor to set our legislative calendar is about the same as our setting his calendar for going around the state," said Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson. "It would be setting a terrible precedent."

A coalition of citizen activists pushing for changes in the Legislature say getting an earlier start isn't enough. On Monday, they plan to discuss a proposal by Common Cause of Pennsylvania that would impose fines and withhold pay for lawmakers and the governor if a budget isn't passed on time.

The proposal calls for budgets to be passed by May 15 in the House and by June 21 — or 35 days after a House vote — in the Senate. Missing either deadline would cost lawmakers $100 a day in fines.

A budget delayed past June 30 would require lawmakers and the governor to forfeit their salaries for each day of an impasse.

Common Cause's executive director, Barry Kauffman, acknowledges the concept isn't new. His group first proposed it in 1991, when a budget stalemate forced state employees to work without pay for a month.

"It puts incentives in place so that the people who are penalized are the people causing the problem," Kauffman said. "We don't penalize state workers."