LAS VEGAS - State Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio (R-Reno) called Wednesday for Democratic legislators to work with him to come up with a consensus proposal to fix the state's budget shortfall.

"I have asked the Democrats in both the Assembly and the Senate," said Raggio. "I want to work with them-we want to work with them to make this an apolitical session. It should be a short session. It should be dealing with how we deal with whatever the number is and not be a partisan fight."

Raggio has proposed deferring a 4 percent increase in state and university employees and school teachers' cost-of-living allowances to meet the shortfall, but that appears unlikely to pass the Democrat-dominated state assembly.

"That is not going to happen," Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie (D-Reno) told the Las Vegas Review Journal Tuesday.

Raggio would not comment on any other proposals, however, saying that he is "not going to start throwing things out on the table" until he receives updated numbers from the budget division "in a day or two."