The legislature's budget-writing committee has suddenly halted plans to vote on an alternative to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's budget proposal.

Democratic leaders of the Appropriations Committee made a surprise announcement Tuesday that they were adjourning without taking the scheduled vote, expressing disappointment there wasn't bipartisan support for the two-year, $40.3 billion proposal.

It's unclear whether a spending bill can be passed before the committee's Thursday deadline, or whether a separate tax bill will be voted on as well.

Democrats say they didn't know until recently that Republicans weren't supporting the spending bill and instead planned to release their own budget. But the GOP leaders say they've been upfront for weeks about their budget proposal, expressing concerns with proposed Democratic tax increases.

Democrats hold a slim majority on the committee.

A local lawmaker is critical of what he said was a tone-deaf budget proposal.  Monroe Representative JP Sredzinski says a 5.2 percent spending increase was proposed, and then a vote quickly cancelled. 

The Democratic spending plan did remove some of the governor’s more controversial proposals to substantially redistribute local education aid and to shift teacher pension costs onto municipalities.  But Sredzinski says the plan would have spent $403 million more than what the governor proposed.  He railed against the his Committee colleagues saying it's another example that the majority doesn't grasp how angry and frustrated taxpayers are.

He added that Connecticut will not tax its way out of this problem and the legislature needs to proceed with that mentality.

Earlier this week, the non-partisan Office of Legislative Research announced an update to revenue projections indicating a shortfall of more than $260 million based on tax collections.