Differing opinions on mandatory minimum sentences remain the big hurdle for efforts in Montpelier and Concord to overhaul the Twin States' sex-offender laws.

Approaching the finish line of the legislative session in Vermont, a conference committee of members of the House and Senate yesterday reached deals on several issues — including more ways to notify communities about registered offenders in those towns — but remained deadlocked over how best to punish offenders convicted of aggravated sexual assault.

And in New Hampshire, the House and the Senate were preparing to form a conference panel next week to work out differences over the Senate's insistence on giving prosecutors the ability to seek a mandatory minimum prison term of 25 years for child rapists in the Granite State legislation.

"We were pretty far apart coming into (yesterday)," state Rep. Michael Kainen, a Hartford Republican and member of the House Judiciary Committee in Montpelier, said yesterday afternoon. "We're fine with everything now but (the Senate's) aggravated-assault 10-year mandatory minimum. We've worked out almost everything else.

"I think the chances are at least 50-50 that we'll be able to hash this out," he added.

That's if conferees can beat the clock: Legislative leaders want to wrap up the current session on Tuesday. "I'd say we're at the 11th hour, maybe the 11th-and-a-half hour," said Senate Majority Leader John Campbell, a Quechee Democrat. "If we don't reach agreement by Tuesday, the bill's going to be dead."

In New Hampshire, Lebanon Democrat Lee Hammond, a member of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee, said yesterday that he expects House and Senate conferees to spend at least a month trying to find a way around the mandatory minimum sentence for child rapists that the Senate passed by a 21-3 vote last month.

As in Vermont, New Hampshire House lawmakers are aiming to give judges more discretion in sentencing and had earlier rejected the mandatory minimums for first-time offenders.

"It'll be the second half of May and into June, depending how quickly we can reach a compromise," Hammond said. "Both sides are feeling pretty strong on their stands."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Foster, a Nashua Democrat, expressed a bit more optimism.

"I think we have to have it done ... it'll only go for a couple of weeks," Foster said. "I don't see the positions as black and white. I think we've got room for agreement, more than you'd think from reading the newspapers. Both (chambers) worked hard on their bills.

"We're going to work through it, try to understand their position and hope they understand ours," Foster added.

In Vermont, Senate leaders — particularly Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Sears of Bennington — publicly have been standing firm on a 10-year mandatory minimum.

"The official word is, 'I'm not coming off it,'" Kainen said. "'Take it or leave it.'"

In recent days, however, House conferees who had been pushing for a five-year "advisory" minimum for aggravated sexual assault proposed a "presumptive" minimum of 10 years, which would require any judge sentencing a convicted sex offender to put on the record why he or she decided not to impose at least 10 years.

Campbell said that senators have been talking internally about lowering the mandatory minimum to eight years, but have yet to formally propose it in conference.