This is it; the last day of fiscal year 2008-2009 for Arizona state government. State lawmakers now have until midnight, or about 17 hours from now as I write, to adopt some kind of budget plan that Gov. Jan Brewer will sign — or risk a government shutdown once Brewer’s administration and independent state agencies lose their spending authority. A shutdown would affect everything from the Department of Public Safety to the prison system to the state’s three public universities to local school districts that depend on state funds to pay their bills. Health care for the poor and disabled, child abuse investigations, state parks and services for veterans all could be stopped immediately.
The budget deal reached last week between Brewer and the top two legislative leaders finally passed one test late Monday night, when it was narrowly approved by the Senate Committee on Education Accountability and Reform. The full Senate is scheduled to start debating the proposal shortly after 9:30 a.m. this morning. So far, Senate President Bob Burns doesn’t appear to have enough Republican votes for a statewide sales tax election, which Brewer says must be part of the package. And Democrats insist they are rejecting the entire plan. If the Senate somehow does approve, we don’t know what will happen in the House of Representatives.
Today we find out if the Arizona Legislature and governor are at least as competent as California and the federal government. Those two entities manage to adopt some kind of spending plan to keep government operating even when they can’t manage to agree on a formal budget, most of the time anyway.
Twitter