AUGUSTA – After fussing over details of competing plans for much of the day, majority Democrats and the lone independent on the Appropriations Committee voted over Republican opposition Friday night to approve an amended version of Gov. Angus King’s $229 million budget-balancing package.

Democrats, joined by independent Sen. Jill Goldthwait, lined up behind the basics of the King package, including a $48 million deferral of business tax breaks, but recrafted a tax on hospitals designed to raise about $3.5 million.

The hospital assessment change replaces a proposed system that proponents said could increase federal matching funds for the state with a straight tax.

Republicans had criticized the delay in payments under Maine’s Business Equipment Tax Reimbursement program and had expressed interest in an alternative that might have reduced the tax liability itself.

Well into the day, however, things changed.

“The business community said they’re not interested,” recounted Goldthwait, the Senate chairwoman of the committee from Bar Harbor who had drafted an alternative to lower the personal property tax that businesses pay.

Goldthwait, who said the state chamber of commerce position had been explained “directly to me,” added that members of the business community apparently believed they could obtain more favorable treatment in the future.

“That was the end of the Republicans having another place to go,” Goldthwait said before GOP panelists voted against the reworked King package without offering a budget-balancing plan of their own.

Republican Rep. Richard Nass of Acton said he had heard the same thing from the chamber.

“There is no purpose then” for putting forth a Republican alternative to King’s deferral plan “when they’re no longer concerned.”

In the end, said Nass, “there’s more bad than good in this for us.”

Democrats voting to recommend the amended plan to the full Legislature said they too were troubled by some of the elements in the package, which combines outright spending reductions with a variety of fund transfers.

Democratic Rep. Randall Berry of Livermore, the House chairman of the committee, alluded to the state’s $240 million revenue shortfall and credited the King administration for having “provided a reasonable framework to deal with this emergency.”

Democrats were supporting the amended plan “as unhappy as we are with it,” Berry said.

Similarly, Democratic Sen. Mary Cathcart of Orono described the final vote as “a reasonable though very painful conclusion” to the panel’s deliberations.

The committee’s partisan standoff reflected a similar split among House and Senate leaders that became evident Thursday after two meetings at the Blaine House.

But the closing of the budget Friday night came without rancor.

“We made, I think, an honest effort to develop a consensus here,” Nass said.

The divided report from the Appropriations panel next goes to the full Legislature when lawmakers convene in special session Wednesday.

At that session, it is expected that majority Democrats will enact their own version of King’s budget-balancing package and that the independent governor will sign it into law despite Republican opposition.

Top King aide Kay Rand said Friday night the committee’s amended bill would be acceptable.