Sen. Les Donovan, center, R-Wichita, leads the Senate tax negotiating team Sunday with Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, and Caryn Tyson, R-Parker. Donovan had threatened to resign his chairmanship during an outburst of frustration the night before.

Sen. Les Donovan returned to his seat as chairman of the Senate tax committee Sunday, saying his threat the previous night to resign was merely “venting.”

A House-Senate conference committee met briefly Sunday afternoon, hoping to come again to come up with a combination of tax provisions that that would balance the budget and pass both chambers.

“I was unhappy,” Donovan, R-Wichita, said afterwards.

Saturday afternoon, the conference committee had agreed to send a plan to the chambers that would have filled only about half of the state’s estimated $400 million revenue shortfall. It included several minor items that were believed to be acceptable in both chambers: an increase in cigarette taxes; cuts in itemized deductions; and a tax amnesty program that some believe — although many doubt — could raise $30 million next year.

But there were no big changes in the two major revenue sources that stir the most controversy, sales and income taxes.

It wasn’t entirely clear what leaders had planned to happen next: either try to work on a sales tax or income tax provision separately; or pass a new budget that would cut the other $200 million or so out of spending.

Donovan said he felt confident that the scaled-back tax package would pass. But in the hours after the conference committee approved it, Donovan said, other senators started meeting in small groups to come up with their own plans, some of which had never been the subject of hearings before. And all of those new plans were being developed without anyone consulting him.

By the time the Senate convened later Saturday night, leaders had decided not to vote on the conference plan. Donovan then gave an angry speech chastising other senators and announcing that he was stepping down as tax chairman.

“Madam President, I want you to find another tax chair, and I want you to do it now,” he said, speaking directly to Senate President Susan Wagle, a fellow Wichita Republican.

Later that night, he did attend a hastily called conference meeting. There, the committee agreed to meet again Sunday to consider a different proposal from the House.

That proposal was a slightly different mixture of many of the same tax pieces that have been considered before: an increase in sales tax, coupled with a decrease in the tax on food; cigarette taxes and a few other items. But it does not include any taxes on non-wage business income.