Grover Norquist/AP photo

It’s been 10 days since I left town to attend my brother’s wedding. At the time, Gov. Jan Brewer and legislative Republicans were supposed to be on the verge of finally adopting a balanced budget that included a November election to hike the statewide salex tax. In my last blog post, I predicted Brewer, Senate President Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams would do huge political damage to themselves and the Republican Party if they couldn’t finally get their act together.

Well, Adams, R-Mesa, and fellow House GOP leaders did their part while I was gone and won approval of a new budget that links Brewer’s sales tax election to an immediate repeal of state property taxes and future reductions in corporate and personal income taxes.

However, the dysfunctional meltdown in the Senate continued unabated. Burns, R-Peoria, managed to switch one vote of Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, with legislative language to arbitrarily shrink the state workforce by 5 percent or 1,700 jobs. But Sen. Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, (the Republican floor leader) went on a weeklong vacation cruise and Sen. Pamela Gorman, R-Anthem, resigned her post as Republican whip to fend off expectations that she deliver the magical 16th vote to send the budget proposal to Brewer.

Still unwilling to negotiate with Democrats, Brewer suggested Wednesday that the sales tax election and the future tax cuts be put in separate bills, so that Sen. Carolyn Allen, R-Scottsdale can provide the required 16th vote for the first portion while Gorman provides the 16th vote for the second half. But tying the two issues firmly together into a single bill is what got the budget proposal through the House last week in the first place.

So Burns didn’t even bother trying to make a final push on the budget today, and less than a quorum of senators were present to pray and pledge before going home for the weekend.

Now, Capitol Media Services is reporting that Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform might be riding to Brewer’s rescue. Norquist has become something of a shadow lawmaker on the budget debate this year with his threats to politically punish any Republican who signed the ATR oath to never raise taxes but votes to send a possible sales tax hike to a statewide election. Apparently, Norquist has sent a new letter to those Republicans saying it’s now OK to vote for the sales tax election in a stand-alone bill, just as along as they make darn sure they vote for the proposed tax cuts in a second bill in the same budget package.

That might be enough to keep the support of at least 31 House Republicans. Then again, something else could just as easily go wrong, considering the recent luck of Brewer and Co.

By the way, the Legislature has to approve a budget when it returns Monday, or  sales tax election on Nov. 3 will be out of the question because of technical reasons related to federal and state election laws. There’s nothing like deadline pressure to inspire Arizona politicians. That’s why our Legislature finished its previous attempt at a budget in the early hours of the current fiscal year.