After opening the special session this afternoon, the Legislature heard a summary of last week’s budget vetoes by Gov. Jan Brewer. Richard Stavneak also covered the likely impact if the vetoes aren’t addressed. In a nutshell, the governor added about $1.8 billion in spending and lost transfers to the $8.4 billion plan approved by lawmakers early Wednesday morning. That’s on top of her veto of $3.2 billion in appropriations for school districts and charter schools (she left intact the spending authority, but took away the actual money). Make that $1.8 billion in deficit spending and lost transfers, unless the Legislature acts.
However, the Legislature apparently is going to move today on only two immediate concerns — that $3.2 billion in education funds and a technical change related to the operation of the state Medicaid insurance program. Without an immediate fix, Arizona could lose up to $2 billion in federal stimulus funds to help pay for those two areas. (The actual funding bill adds another $500 million to the education appropriation, possibly required to get votes from Democratic lawmakers).
It’s interesting how the Legislature worked for six months on the budget, but still didn’t finish until hours after the fiscal year had elapsed last week. However, lawmakers apparently can blast right through paperwork barriers and partisan bickering in a single day to protect the state’s share of federal largese.
UPDATE: Another bill that’s likely to be adopted today would suspend the daily salary of lawmakers when they aren’t reporting to the Capitol to conduct business. In theory, this would allow lawmakers to keep the special session open for days or weeks while they are at home, and avoid the appearence of getting paid to do nothing. The bill passed unanimously inthe House and Senate appropriations committees, although there was some grumbling about it from lawmakers from outside of Maricopa County. This might be in response to a bill from Rep. Jerry Weiers, R-Phoenix, that proposed to deny lawmakers up to $175 in pay and accumulated expenses for every day that they missed a single roll call vote without permission from their chamber’s presiding officer. This bill came close to passing but was defeated in the House on the final day of the regular session.
Twitter