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LINCOLN — Nebraska farmers can put away their pitchforks and lower their torches.

The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to leave the state’s agricultural checkoff funds untouched.

The committee also spared a brand inspection fund, made smaller cuts than the governor proposed in college scholarship funds and maintained money intended to boost support for the humanities.

But they accepted many of Gov. Dave Heineman’s proposed cuts and added a few of their own to help close the state’s $334 million budget gap.

Among the cuts were money to promote the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament in Omaha and $500,000 intended to boost the state’s emergency fund.

The committee will meet again today to continue working on its own budget plan. The goal is to finish the plan by the weekend and have it ready for legislative debate next week.

State Sen. Lavon Heidemann of Elk Creek, the committee chairman and a farmer, offered the motion to spare funds paid by agricultural producers for marketing, research, promotion and education about their crops.

The motion affects the checkoff funds for corn, wheat, dry beans and sorghum, which are managed by separate state agencies, and funds for poultry and eggs, grapes and potatoes, which are managed within the state Department of Agriculture.

Controversy engulfed the governor’s proposal to tap those funds as part of his budget-balancing solution almost as soon as the idea became public.

Producers argued that the checkoffs were set up to benefit their products, not support the general operations of government.

Keith Olsen, president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau, said the governor’s plan amounted to a tax hike on agriculture.

The outcry brought results in the Legislature.

A bill to ban transfers from the checkoff funds had 14 co-sponsors when it was introduced. And Appropriations Committee members were of one mind on the motion to spare the funds.

Committee members also voted unanimously against accepting the governor’s plan as proposed.

Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha, a Democrat, sought the vote and used it as an opportunity to lambast the Republican Heineman and his budget proposal.

He said that the proposal was not sustainable and that lawmakers had not been given enough latitude in the special session to properly address the state’s budget issues.

Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln, a Republican, accused Mello of trying to embarrass the governor by seeking “a record vote of all of us voting no.”

During the hours that followed, the committee made several changes from the governor’s proposal. Many were done in response to testimony during public hearings.

The committee approved a reduction in state aid to schools, lowering the figure to match the aid changes advanced Tuesday by the Education Committee. The aid changes would mean a $31 million reduction in state aid for the 2010-11 school year, compared to what it would have been under current law.

Mello offered a motion to require state agencies to use furloughs rather than layoffs when responding to the budget cuts. He said cutting jobs during a recession won’t help the state’s economy.

Sen. John Wightman of Lexington countered that growing — or even maintaining — government during a recession is bad policy, as well. He said agencies should be free to decide how to make cuts. He also noted that furloughs don’t reduce the state budget for future years.

Mello withdrew the motion before it could come to a vote but vowed to revisit the issue.

Martha Stoddard reports for the Omaha World-Herald.