Groundhog Day

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

When the clock struck midnight on June 30, legislative leaders ordered the clocks in the Arizona Legislature turned off to suspend time so that it would still be June 30. Day 171 of the regular legislative session never occurred.

On day 171, the Accidental Governor vetoed the budget of the GOP insane clown posse leadership. So it was as if the previous 171 days of the legislative session never occurred either.

Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, the Arizona Legislature is forced to relive the same day over and over again until it finally learns to produce a balanced state budget that the Accidental Governor will actually agree to sign.

The Special Session begins today. Two items are on the agenda: a balanced state budget for the 2010 fiscal year which began July 1, as mandated by the Arizona Constitution; and imposing a temporary tax to boost state revenues for education, public safety and health and human services.

The Accidental Governor believes these two items are inextricably linked with one another; she must have both before she will agree to sign any budget deal. The GOP insane clown posse leadership, however, believes these two items are separable and unrelated. They are digging in their heels to object to any sales tax increase, and they want to take out their budget ax to cut spending deeper.

"I don't know what part of 'no' she doesn't understand, but we're not going to support a sales tax increase if I have anything to say about it," said Rep. Sam Crump, a Phoenix Republican and one of the staunchest opponents of Brewer's tax hike. Who will budge first on budget standoff?

Crump even raised the specter of defying Brewer's special session order, saying, "Maybe it's time for us to do a little grandstanding and not show up." Or maybe he will take a page from Eric Cartman's playbook.

For any Republicans considering Crump's suggested childish behavior, officers from the Department of Public Safety can be dispatched to track you down and haul your sorry butt back to the Capitol. This would make for a "must see TV" episode of Cops.

There is no way to predict how long this Special Session will last given the intransigence of the Republicans. Unlike previous Special Sessions, there is no negotiated deal already on the table in advance. Ths Special Session was impulsively called by the Accidental Governor without any plan or negotiated agreement. There are some important deadlines, however, which may compel a compromise.

The first deadline is the 10 day window the Accidental Governor has to veto bills sent to her for her signature after sine die on July 1. She has until July 11 to hold the threat of a veto over the pet bills of recalcitrant legislators in exchange for their votes on a budget to her liking. After July 11, the bills become law without her signature, and she loses any leverage she now has. The Legislature is well aware of this deadline.

The Accidental Governor's aka "Big Casino's" veto of the entire K-12 budget last week also created a July 15 deadline for a new budget deal because that is when the next $300 million state payment to public schools is due. That makes this an especially perilous time for charter schools and the 100,000 students who attend them; those schools don't have the authority to issue IOUs as traditional schools do. Charter schools are a Republican pet project, but Rep. Rich Crandall isn't convinced that the threat of a funding deadline will be enough of a ticking time bomb to sway his GOP colleagues to back a Brewer budget plan. Who will budge first on budget standoff?

"Not at all," said Crandall, a Mesa Republican and chairman of the House Education Committee. "I'm not even sure what a time bomb would be."

Tough talk until charter schools do not open as scheduled. Then we'll see how tough you are when parents start calling you about your indifference to their child's education, tough guy.

There is also a July 31 "drop dead" deadline to refer any tax matter to the November 3 ballot. If there is no deal by then, the tax referral becomes moot. The Legislature is not likely to agree to any Special Election during the holidays, and is even less likely to approve a Special Election during the legislative session beginning next January, when the Legislature is certain to be mired in deadlock once again over the 2011 state budget.

As I have argued before, the Accidental Governor's best and perhaps only option is to make concessions to the Democrats to back their budget proposal, which has been almost universally praised by the state's media including again today in the Arizona Daily Star Legislature gets second chance on budget ("the Democrats offered a sensible budget plan earlier this year…"), and then use the power of her office to bring along the four Republicans in the Senate and the six Republicans in the House needed to pass the budget.

The Democratic budget plan has the distinct advantage of not requiring any tax referral to the ballot in a Special Election. It thus saves the expense of a Special Election and eliminates any contingency or uncertainty about the outcome of a Special Election.

The choice is yours, Governor. Deal in good faith with the Democrats to produce a viable state budget, or continue to engage in a protracted pissing match with intransigent ideological extremists in your own party and begin preparing for a partial shutdown of state government as the money starts to run out.