BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota's corrections budget now includes $42 million for improvements to the main state prison, but does not have any legislative permission to spend it.

The Senate Appropriations Committee endorsed the proposal Thursday as part of a package of changes to the proposed 2007-09 budget of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The measure now goes to the Senate floor for a vote, followed by negotiations between a six-member committee of House and Senate members, who will work out the details of the legislation.

"The House and the Senate, at this stage, are quite a ways apart," said Sen. Raymon Holmberg, R-Grand Forks, the Senate Appropriations chairman.

Gov. John Hoeven included a $42 million construction and renovation project at the main state prison in Bismarck in his budget recommendations to the Legislature. House Republicans have repudiated the plan, favoring construction of a new prison instead.

The Senate Appropriations Committee's action Thursday, although it sets aside money for Hoeven's preferred project, does not endorse going ahead with it. Instead, the money is put in an existing "state penitentiary land fund."

The fund is used to account for income from gravel excavation on land owned by the Youth Correctional Center in Mandan. Its balance is now $64,000, said Allen Knudson, a budget analyst for the Legislative Council, which is the research arm of the Legislature.

Holmberg said there is almost no Senate support for the House's favored option for a new prison, and said members were "very skeptical" of Hoeven's plans for $42 million in renovation and construction.

The governor's plan includes the tearing down of an existing prison cell block, construction of a new one, and construction of other new facilities, including a laundry, medical clinic and segregation cells for prisoners who are disciplinary problems.

The bill is HB1015.